Houston-founded unicorn closes $240M round of funding led by Dallas firm

fresh funding

Cart.com, a Houston-founded unicorn ecommerce company, has closed its latest round of funding. Photo via cart.com

Cart.com, which moved its headquarters from Houston to Austin in December but still maintains a local presence, just landed $240 million in equity and debt funding.

Legacy Knight Capital Partners, the equity investment arm of the Legacy Knight Multifamily Office, led the equity round, with participation from Citi Ventures, Visa, and other Fortune 100 companies. J.P. Morgan and TriplePoint Capital provided the debt financing. Since being founded in 2020, Cart.com has secured $380 million in funding.

“What [CEO Omair Tariq] and the team at Cart.com have accomplished in the last 14 months is nothing short of remarkable. They have proven they have the ability to rapidly execute on their vision of building the first fully end-to-end e-commerce platform at massive scale,” David Sawyer, chief operating officer and managing partner of Legacy Knight, says in a news release.

Legacy Knight has offices in Houston and Dallas. On its website, Legacy Knight Capital Partners says it makes direct investments of $10 million to $50 million in growth-stage companies and real estate projects.

“With this new funding,” Tariq says, “we’re poised to continue our strategy of acquiring top providers from across the e-commerce value chain, while staying hyper-focused on meeting the evolving needs of the brands we serve.”

Cart.com recently acquired Dallas-based FB Flurry, a provider of technology for fulfillment and customer care, and SellerActive, a Tigard, Oregon-based provider of multichannel e-commerce software.

Omair Tariq, CEO of Cart.com Omair Tariq's Cart.com raised a big round last week. Photo via Cart.com

“The Cart.com team is building a platform that can help sellers of all sizes grow faster as the future of commerce becomes increasingly digital,” says Rubail Birwadker, senior vice president of global digital partnerships at Visa.

Cart.com supplies a variety of software and services for more than 2,000 online merchants.

Last year, the startup decided to relocate its headquarters to Austin, citing the city’s rise as an alternative to Silicon Valley and as “the country’s most exciting and fertile space for high-tech innovation.”

Furthermore, Cart.com said the relocation would help the startup by being in the same business ecosystem as Austin-based companies such as Whole Foods, YETI, Kendra Scott, Tito’s Handmade Vodka, Bumble, and Tecovas.

Cart.com’s move coincided with the startup being named Startup of the Year by Capital Factory, an Austin-based startup accelerator that has offices in Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. Capital Factory is an investor in Cart.com.

Cart.com employs more than 850 people.

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Houston university to launch artificial intelligence major, one of first in nation

BS in AI

Rice University announced this month that it plans to introduce a Bachelor of Science in AI in the fall 2025 semester.

The new degree program will be part of the university's department of computer science in the George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing and is one of only a few like it in the country. It aims to focus on "responsible and interdisciplinary approaches to AI," according to a news release from the university.

“We are in a moment of rapid transformation driven by AI, and Rice is committed to preparing students not just to participate in that future but to shape it responsibly,” Amy Dittmar, the Howard R. Hughes Provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, said in the release. “This new major builds on our strengths in computing and education and is a vital part of our broader vision to lead in ethical AI and deliver real-world solutions across health, sustainability and resilient communities.”

John Greiner, an assistant teaching professor of computer science in Rice's online Master of Computer Science program, will serve as the new program's director. Vicente Ordóñez-Román, an associate professor of computer science, was also instrumental in developing and approving the new major.

Until now, Rice students could study AI through elective courses and an advanced degree. The new bachelor's degree program opens up deeper learning opportunities to undergrads by blending traditional engineering and math requirements with other courses on ethics and philosophy as they relate to AI.

“With the major, we’re really setting out a curriculum that makes sense as a whole,” Greiner said in the release. “We are not simply taking a collection of courses that have been created already and putting a new wrapper around them. We’re actually creating a brand new curriculum. Most of the required courses are brand new courses designed for this major.”

Students in the program will also benefit from resources through Rice’s growing AI ecosystem, like the Ken Kennedy Institute, which focuses on AI solutions and ethical AI. The university also opened its new AI-focused "innovation factory," Rice Nexus, earlier this year.

“We have been building expertise in artificial intelligence,” Ordóñez-Román added in the release. “There are people working here on natural language processing, information retrieval systems for machine learning, more theoretical machine learning, quantum machine learning. We have a lot of expertise in these areas, and I think we’re trying to leverage that strength we’re building.”

Houston biomanufacturing accelerator adds pilot plant to support scale-ups

new digs

Houston accelerator BioWell announced this month that it has taken over operations of Texas BioTechnology’s pilot plant in Richmond, Texas.

The 33,000-square-foot facility is one of the largest of its kind in the U.S. and features molecular biology labs, advanced automation, fermentation equipment and 16 dedicated benches for early-stage industrial biomanufacturing companies, according to a release from the company. It will allow BioWell to offer on-site education, workforce development, and lab training for students and workers.

BioWell and its founding company, First Bight Ventures, report that the facility should help address the industry's "scale-up bottleneck due to limited pilot- and demonstration-scale infrastructure" in the U.S.

"As a Houston-based accelerator dedicated exclusively to early-stage biomanufacturing startups, partnering with this facility was a natural and highly strategic decision for us. The site is fully operational and offers a strong platform to support biomanufacturing companies, industry leaders, and research institutions, providing critical expertise and infrastructure across a broad range of biotechnology production processes,” Veronica Breckenridge, founder of First Bight Ventures and BioWell, said in a news release.

First Bight Ventures shares that the partnership with the facility will also allow it to better support its portfolio companies and make them more attractive to future investors.

BioWell will host an open house and tours of the fermentation and lab spaces and an overview of current bioindustrial projects Wednesday, May 28, at 10:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. RSVPs are required.

BioWell was originally funded by a $700,000 U.S. Economic Development Administration’s Build to Scale grant and launched as a virtual accelerator for bioindustrial startups. Listen to an interview with Carlos Estrada, head of venture acceleration at BioWell, here.

Ultra-fast EV charging bays coming to Waffle House locations in Texas and beyond

power breakfast

Scattered, smothered and ... charged?

Starting next year, EV drivers can connect to ultra-fast charging stations at select Waffle House locations throughout Texas, courtesy of bp pulse.

The EV arm of British energy giant bp announced a strategic partnership with the all-day breakfast chain this week. The company aims to deploy a network of 400kW DC fast chargers and a mix of CCS and NACS connectors at Waffle House locations in Texas, Georgia, Florida, and other restaurants in the South.

Each Waffle House site will feature six ultra-fast EV charging bays, allowing drivers to "(enjoy) Waffle House’s 24/7 amenities," the announcement reads.

“Adding an iconic landmark like Waffle House to our growing portfolio of EV charging sites is such an exciting opportunity. As an integrated energy company, bp is committed to providing efficient solutions like ultra-fast charging to support our customers’ mobility needs," Sujay Sharma, CEO of bp pulse U.S., said in a news release. "We’re building a robust network of ultra-fast chargers across the country, and this is another example of third-party collaborations enabling access to charging co-located with convenient amenities for EV drivers.”

The news comes as bp pulse continues to grow its charging network in Texas.

The company debuted its new high-speed electric vehicle charging site, known as the Gigahub, at the bp America headquarters in Houston last year. In partnership with Hertz Electrifies Houston, it also previously announced plans to install a new EV fast-charging hub at Hobby Airport. In a recent partnership with Simon Malls, bp also shared plans to install EV charging Gigahubs at The Galleria and Katy Mills Mall.

bp has previously reported that it plans to invest $1 billion in EV charging infrastructure by 2030, with $500 million invested by the end of 2025.

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A version of this article originally appeared on EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

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