3 Houston innovators to know this week

Who's who

This week's innovators to know are involved in tech — from app development to revolutionizing the energy industry. Courtesy photos

From restaurant review apps to a device that monitors oil rigs, this week's innovators to know are tech savvy to say the least. All three took a chance on Houston for their startups, and that chance is paying off.

Christopher Robart, president of Ambyint USA

Christopher Robart leads Ambyint — a technology company creating the Nest thermostat for oil rigs — with his twin brother, Alex. Courtesy of Ambyint

Christopher Robart — along with his twin brother, Alex — is in the business of business development. The two run Ambyint, an oil and gas tech company that creates the Nest thermostat of oil rigs.

The company is looking to expand its customer base this year, as well as grow to be able to service different types of rig pumps.

Sumit Sikka, co-founder of Crityk

Sumit Sikka moved to Houston in order to grow his restaurant reviewing app. Courtesy of Crityk

What started as a quest to find the best Moscow Mule in Southern California has turned into growing business thriving in Houston's dining scene. Sumit Sikka first visited Houston for an event to promote the app he co-founded, Crityk, and basically never left.

"I packed up some of my bags and decided to try here in Houston," Sikka says." It's a lot easier to get to decision makers here in Houston than in LA."

Moji Karimi, co-founder of Cemvita Factory

Moji Karimi's company can take carbon dioxide from a refinery and convert it into glucose or another chemical. Courtesy of Cemvita

Moji Karimi never thought his oil and gas career would overlap with his sister's medical research. But in some ways, the fact the two of them teamed up to create a company that takes carbon dioxide from the air and turns it into something else, makes perfect sense that it crosses industries.

"There are a lot of opportunities bringing a proven science or technology from one industry into another to solve problems," he says.


One of this week's top stories is about a Houston company providing pain-relieving technology on the go. The Squid Team/Twitter

5 most popular innovation stories in Houston this week

Now Trending

Editor's note: InnovationMap is starting strong — right out of the gate of 2019. From a restaurant-focused app to B2B companies making a splash in their industry's, the first trending stories post of the year has some great reads.

3 Houston innovators to know this week

These three entrepreneurs have a lot up their sleeves for 2019. Courtesy images

InnovationMap has three inspiring entrepreneurs to lead you into 2019. All three are behind Houston startups that are planning for big growth in the upcoming year. So, read their stories and get familiar with their names and faces — they aren't going anywhere. Read the full story here.

Restaurant-driven app focuses on Houston's food scene

Crityk's main goal is to be a marketing asset to restaurants. Getty Images

One night, Sumit Sikka was on a quest to find the best Moscow Mule in Santa Monica. He couldn't find anything helpful online, and when he finally did get a good recommendation, he was already done for the night.

It was through this experience that Sikka knew he wanted to make a restaurant finder app, but he wanted to do something different from Yelp or Google Reviews. On those platforms, a restaurant can get crushed by a bad review that provides false information. So, when he started getting the ball rolling on Crityk, he realized he needed to give the restaurants a voice. Read the full story here.

Houston company creates portable device that eases pain without the use of drugs

For years, Squid Compression has helped ease the pain of patients in doctor's offices. Now, anyone can get the treatment on the go. Photo via squidgo.com

Many of the estimated 50 million Americans who suffer from chronic pain turn to drugs — including heavily abused opioids — to relieve their symptoms. Houston-based startup Portable Therapeutix LLC's drug-free solution to pain management seeks to put a dent in the market for prescription painkillers.

In 2018, Houston-based Portable Therapeutix introduced Squid Go, a portable device that's designed to ease the pain and swelling of sore joints and muscles. It's a follow-up to the company's Squid Compression, a pain management device launched in 2013 for patients at rehabilitation centers, hospitals, doctor's offices, and the like. Read the full story here.

Houston software startup pivots to provide digital networking solutions

What started as a way to protect your company from a sketchy business partner has turned into a digital networking tool. Getty Images

Several years ago, David Grimes had a business partner who played dirty. It wasn't until the trial that followed the business wrongdoing that Grimes discovered the man had a history of cheating companies out of money. Grimes envisioned a software service that used public information to research potential investors or associates before signing on the dotted line of a partnership.

"I wanted to find a tool that would alleviate that pain and that risk of doing business," Grimes says. "I couldn't find that tool." Read the full story here.

Oil and gas startup exec positions Houston company for more growth in 2019

Christopher Robart leads Ambyint — a technology company creating the Nest thermostat for oil rigs — with his twin brother, Alex. Courtesy of Ambyint

Most of Christopher Robart's 10-year career in oil and gas has been deliberate and calculated — researching the right startup to be involved in or finding the right buyer for a company he invested in. However, his actual start in the industry wasn't so intentional.

"I sort of fell into oil and gas after I got of college back in 2003," says Robart, who is the president of Ambyint USA. "Before that, I was involved in a few startup things — some digital and some not. I was always sort of an entrepreneur." Read the full story here.


Christopher Robart leads Ambyint — a technology company creating the Nest thermostat for oil rigs — with his twin brother, Alex. Courtesy of Ambyint

Oil and gas startup exec positions Houston company for more growth in 2019

Featured Innovator

Most of Christopher Robart's 10-year career in oil and gas has been deliberate and calculated — researching the right startup to be involved in or finding the right buyer for a company he invested in. However, his actual start in the industry wasn't so intentional.

"I sort of fell into oil and gas after I got of college back in 2003," says Robart, who is the president of Ambyint USA. "Before that, I was involved in a few startup things — some digital and some not. I was always sort of an entrepreneur."

Robart shares the passion of entrepreneurialism with his twin brother, Alex, CEO of Ambyint. The two have similar work experiences, since they act as an oil and gas startup team in Houston. One of the first companies the duo bought and sold was PacWest Consulting Partners, which was sold to IHS Energy in 2014, Robart says. The second one, Digital H2O, they founded, grew the team, lead some investments, and sold it to Genscape in 2015.

The pair's newest endeavor is Ambyint, an oilfield smart technology company with Canadian origins. The Robart brothers have been involved in it for about two and a half years.

Christopher Robart spoke with InnovationMap about his career and what he hopes to accomplish with his oil and gas startup in 2019.

InnovationMap: How did you and your brother first get involved in Ambyint?

Christopher Robart: After we left IHS, we knew that our next up was going to be software and upstream oil and gas, but there were a lot of question marks. We did our due diligence. We leveraged all that information we found and settled on which market we wanted to be in. We ended up finding Ambyint and liked what they had built to date, but they had some gaps and shortcomings, particularly on the commercial side, and they had no U.S. presence. We thought those two gaps were something we'd be helpful filling out. We went through a fairly lengthy process to lead an investment into the company, and essentially took over through that process.

IM: So, Ambyint still has an office in Canada?

CR: The Canada office is primarily a technology office, with some sales capabilities up there. The U.S. is primarily sales, marketing, and customer support.

IM: How does the technology work?

CR: The easiest way to explain it is we're like a Nest thermostat for your oil wells. It's a piece of hardware and a piece of software. It's wired into the well's control system and tied up to cloud-based software. From there, we've been deploying artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, etc.

IM: What do you look for in customers?

CR: Oil companies of any shape or size, really. Oil and gas industry aren't really known for being early adopters of technology. There's a lot of resistance to change, particularly at the production level, which we focus on. So we're looking for early adopters looking to lead the way.

We're in pretty much all the major oil-producing areas in the U.S. and Canada. We also have customers in Mexico, Chili, and Egypt. There's a few more countries in the Middle East we're trying to get into.

IM: Are you planning another fundraising round?

CR: We'll embark on a series B in the near future. We closed our series A, and it was pretty large, so we're in a good place. (The series closed in September of 2017 with $11.5 million raised, according to Crunchbase.)

IM: What are your goals for 2019?

CR: We've built a lot of cool technology, and we continue to do that. Our focus for 2019 is to continue to commercialize and expand our customer base. Our sales cycle is pretty long. It could be a year from the time we bring an initial lead to the table, running a pilot, getting results, and developing a plan. It's a long, slow, and, in some cases, a painful process.

When you're doing things like machine learning, you're teaching a machine how to do something a human would do something. What's required to do that is a massive amount of data to start, and from there, it's a never ending journey of data collection and monitoring your accuracy.

We've been focused on one specific artificial lift pump — every well will eventually take a piece of artificial lift pump. We work on the most common artificial lift pump, but it's just one of six key types. In addition to selling more of that pump, we are in the process of expanding to additional lift types.

IM: What keeps you up at night, as it pertains to your business?

CR: Change management. Getting our customers to adopt new technology and embrace change. That's it. We're constantly trying to get our customers to move more quickly.

IM: How do you and your brother work together? Do you each play different roles in the company?

CR: Our backgrounds are similar. We're twins, but we have personality differences. I spend a little more time with our customers than he does and with new product initiatives. I get pretty hands on.

His mandate is less focused on walking and talking with customers and more on managing the functions of the business and working with the leadership team. As well as financing and fundraising.

We've got a pretty good division of labor, but there is a lot of overlap of what we do.

IM: What are some of the pros and cons of being in Houston?

CR: Obviously the pro of being in Houston is it being the oil capital of the world. All our customers are here. It's sort of a must.

The downside of running a technology company in town is that tech talent is quite thin on the ground in Houston — especially what we're looking for. So, we don't have any tech team members in the Houston office. I'll put it mildly in that we are skeptical of the talent pool for really strong software developers in the Houston market.

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Portions of this interview have been edited.

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World's largest student startup competition names teams for 2025 Houston event

ready, set, pitch

The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship has announced the 42 student-led teams worldwide that will compete in the 25th annual Rice Business Plan Competition this spring.

The highly competitive event, known as one of the world’s largest and richest intercollegiate student startup challenges, will take place April 10–12 at Houston's The Ion. Teams in this year's competition represent 34 universities from four countries, including one team from Rice.

Graduate student-led teams from colleges or universities around the world will present their plans before more than 300 angel, venture capital, and corporate investors to compete for more than $1 million in prizes. Last year, top teams were awarded $1.5 million in investment and cash prizes.

The 2025 invitees include:

  • 3rd-i, University of Miami
  • AG3 Labs, Michigan State University
  • Arcticedge Technologies, University of Waterloo
  • Ark Health, University of Chicago
  • Automatic AI, University of Mississippi and University of New Orleans
  • Bobica Bars, Rowan University
  • Carbon Salary, Washington University in St. Louis
  • Carmine Minerals, California State University, San Bernardino
  • Celal-Mex, Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education
  • CELLECT Laboratories, University of Waterloo
  • ECHO Solutions, University of Houston
  • EDUrain, University of Missouri-St. Louis
  • Eutrobac, University of California, Santa Cruz
  • FarmSmart.ai, Louisiana State University
  • Fetal Therapy Technologies, Johns Hopkins University
  • GreenLIB Materials, University of Ottawa
  • Humimic Biosystems, University of Arkansas
  • HydroHaul, Harvard University
  • Intero Biosystems, University of Michigan
  • Interplay, University of Missouri-Kansas City
  • MabLab, Harvard University
  • Microvitality, Tufts University
  • Mito Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University
  • Motmot, Michigan State University
  • Mud Rat, University of Connecticut
  • Nanoborne, University of Texas at Austin
  • NerView Surgical, McMaster University
  • NeuroFore, Washington University in St. Louis
  • Novus, Stanford University
  • OAQ, University of Toronto
  • Parthian Baattery Solutions, Columbia University
  • Pattern Materials, Rice University
  • Photon Queue, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
  • re.solution, RWTH Aachen University
  • Rise Media, Yale University
  • Rivulet, University of Cambridge and Dartmouth College
  • Sabana, Carnegie Mellon University
  • SearchOwl, Case Western Reserve University
  • Six Carbons, Indiana University
  • Songscription, Stanford University
  • Watermarked.ai, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
  • Xatoms, University of Toronto

This year's group joins more than 868 RBPC alums that have raised more than $6.1 billion in capital with 59 successful exits, according to the Rice Alliance.

Last year, Harvard's MesaQuantum, which was developing accurate and precise chip-scale clocks, took home the biggest sum of $335,000. While not named as a finalist, the team secured the most funding across a few prizes.

Protein Pints, a high-protein, low-sugar ice cream product from Michigan State University, won first place and the $150,000 GOOSE Capital Investment Grand Prize, as well as other prizes, bringing its total to $251,000.

Tesla recalling more than 375,000 vehicles due to power steering issue

Tesla Talk

Tesla is recalling more than 375,000 vehicles due to a power steering issue.

The recall is for certain 2023 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles operating software prior to 2023.38.4, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The printed circuit board for the electronic power steering assist may become overstressed, causing a loss of power steering assist when the vehicle reaches a stop and then accelerates again, the agency said.

The loss of power could required more effort to control the car by drivers, particularly at low speeds, increasing the risk of a crash.

Tesla isn't aware of any crashes, injuries, or deaths related to the condition.

The electric vehicle maker headed by Elon Musk has released a free software update to address the issue.

Letters are expected to be sent to vehicle owners on March 25. Owners may contact Tesla customer service at 1-877-798-3752 or the NHTSA at 1-888-327-4236.

Houston space tech companies land $25 million from Texas commission

Out Of This World

Two Houston aerospace companies have collectively received $25 million in grants from the Texas Space Commission.

Starlab Space picked up a $15 million grant, and Intuitive Machines gained a $10 million grant, according to a Space Commission news release.

Starlab Space says the money will help it develop the Systems Integration Lab in Webster, which will feature two components — the main lab and a software verification facility. The integration lab will aid creation of Starlab’s commercial space station.

“To ensure the success of our future space missions, we are starting with state-of-the-art testing facilities that will include the closest approximation to the flight environment as possible and allow us to verify requirements and validate the design of the Starlab space station,” Starlab CEO Tim Kopra said in a news release.

Starlab’s grant comes on top of a $217.5 million award from NASA to help eventually transition activity from the soon-to-be-retired International Space Station to new commercial destinations.

Intuitive Machines is a space exploration, infrastructure and services company. Among its projects are a lunar lander designed to land on the moon and a lunar rover designed for astronauts to travel on the moon’s surface.

The grants come from the Space Commission’s Space Exploration and Aeronautics Research Fund, which recently awarded $47.7 million to Texas companies.

Other recipients were:

  • Cedar Park-based Firefly Aerospace, which received $8.2 million
  • Brownsville-based Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), which received $7.5 million
  • Van Horn-based Blue Origin, which received $7 million

Gwen Griffin, chair of the commission, says the grants “will support Texas companies as we grow commercial, military, and civil aerospace activity across the state.”

State lawmakers established the commission in 2023, along with the Texas Aerospace Research & Space Economy Consortium, to bolster the state’s space industry.

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