Houston software entrepreneur discusses company growth and the importance of remembrance during Pride Month

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For Cody Gremminger, this month is about remembrance. Courtesy of Cyber One Solutions

One day, Cody Gremminger sat down with his fiance, Brian Carrico, and decided going into business together was something they wanted to explore. They put their heads together, thought of a name — Cyber One Solutions — and created a management, service and IT support company that serves the greater Houston area with satellite offices in Austin, Dallas, Lufkin, Brenham, and Beaumont.

Cyber One Solutions has experienced massive growth in less than two years of being in business, and InnovationMap sat down to talk with Gremminger about Cyber One's next steps, what it's like working with your partner, and the importance of the support gained by the LGBTQ community.

InnovationMap: Your company is less than two years old, but you’ve had massive growth and success. What are some lessons that you’ve learned throughout that time?

Cody Gremminger: We're an IT company, so definitely making sure that we have a huge book of processes and everything like that. Organization is one of the most important things. Finding good people that treat your clients that way that you treat them. Whenever you start off with a company and it's just the two founders, you know how you want to treat all of your clients. But it is hard to find people to treat the clients the same way you want to treat them.

IM: What do the next steps of Cyber One Solutions look like?

CG: The next steps of the company at this point are to keep growing and keep taking care of our current clients, just like every company in their infancy age.

IM: Are you planning on growing your team or slate of services anytime soon?

CG: We are looking into both. We have a couple of our team members working on getting further certifications and further training into new aspects of IT. We're also working on growing our current client base past what we already have.

We have some clients that we work with every month because we have a contract with them, and we have some clients that kind of come and go. On a monthly basis, we probably work with about 25 to 30 clients and then as far as people who need a hard drive replaced or something like that, it adds about 10 to 15 extra clients a month.

IM: You and Brian own the business together. What are some of the pros and cons of being a couple and working together?

CG: There's a lot of pros. It's really good because you are both fully committed. We're normally on the same page; we're always on the same team. We're both here for Cyber One Solutions. It kind of helps that this is how we pay our bills too.

We're very actively involved and dedicated to it. Some of the cons could be that work never quits. Once you get home, what are you going to talk about? Well, we've been working together all day so we're going to talk about work.

I suspect that other couples talk about their different jobs, while we talk about things we worked on at the same company. It is a different dynamic. My parents actually own a company together and work together too, so it's not abnormal for me, I guess.

IM: As members of the Greater Houston LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce, you’re connected with a wide variety of entrepreneurs in the LGBTQ community. Why is having that support system so important?

CG: We're members of the LGBT Houston chamber, and we're also recently, as of March or April, we got our National LGBT Chamber certification. The Houston LGBT Chamber is one of our favorites. It's just a place where we feel like everybody is actually there for each other. They are there to meet new businesses and talk to everybody. It's super friendly, and it's a place where you can just be yourself. It's awesome. I love going to all of their events.

IM: What does pride month mean to you?

CG: Pride month to me is all about celebration, awareness, and remembrance. At Pride, everybody is there and we are all celebrating the fact that we are who we are, and we're all celebrating each other. Awareness kind of goes with celebration.

We start to see corporate logos change color. For example, I took a photo of the HP float at Pride because we are HP partners here at Cyber One, and I do a lot with HP computers. It was cool to see them have a float in the parade. A couple of our vendors that we use, their logos turned rainbow. It's just been really cool.

I would say that remembrance because at pride, they give you a second to stop and look back and see how far this community has come. We've had the Pulse nightclub shooting…we've had Stonewall, which was a theme of the Pride parade this year. It's just all of that wrapped together.

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Portions of this interview have been edited.

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UTHealth Houston officially opens new tower in TMC's Helix Park

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UTHealth Houston School of Public Health recently opened its new state-of-the-art tower in the Texas Medical Center’s Helix Park.

The 350,000-square-foot, 10-story campus at 1930 Old Spanish Trail was celebrated with an official ribbon-cutting ceremony on Oct. 28. The $229 million project will consolidate all UTHealth Houston School of Public Health operations into one facility. It will also connect students who are at the Austin, Brownsville, Dallas, El Paso and San Antonio campuses with peers and faculty through digital and distance learning.

Disciplines taught in the new tower will include epidemiology, genetics, nutrition, health policy, data science and health promotion, UTHealth shared when the building first broke ground in 2023.

Architects Kirksey Architecture and Smith Group designed the building, and Vaughn Construction served as general contractor. The facility features labs for studying human disease, classrooms and spaces to support interdisciplinary and community-based research, a broadcast studio and a teaching kitchen. A skybridge over Old Spanish Trail connects the new tower with a plaza that's shared with MD Anderson.

“This new facility reflects the kind of forward-looking investment that will serve Texans for generations,” Janiece Longoria, vice chairman of the UT System Board of Regents, said in a news release. “By creating an environment where talented people can learn, collaborate, and pursue new ideas, UTHealth Houston is building capacity to meet the challenges of tomorrow while strengthening its impact across our state.”

UTHealth says the system aims for the new campus to expand on collaborative research efforts and continue graduate education, as enrollment at the School of Public Health has increased by 27 percent over the last five years.

“This new building, with its state-of-the-art education technology and learning environment, will strengthen and advance the school’s mission to educate and train the next generation of experts who will advance scientific discovery, shape evidence-based health policy, and lead innovative solutions to the complex health challenges in communities throughout Texas and across the nation,” Kevin Morano, senior vice president, provost and chief academic officer of UTHealth Houston, added in a news release.

Attending the ceremony were Dr. Melina R. Kibbe, UTHealth Houston president and Alkek Williams Distinguished Chair; Eric Boerwinkle, dean, M. David Low Chair in Public Health and Kozmetsky Family Chair in Human Genetics at the School of Public Health; Texas State Representative Lauren Ashley Simmons, Texas House District 146; representatives of the offices of Senator John Cornyn and Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis; and Dr. Theresa Tran, director of the Houston Health Department.

"This building represents far more than a home for our school,” Boerwinkle added in the release. “It represents the people who make our mission possible: the faculty, staff, and students who fill each laboratory and classroom with curiosity, discovery, and purpose to improve the population’s quality of life.”

Rice University breaks ground on new innovation hub, The Arc

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Construction is officially underway on Rice University's The Arc in Houston’s Ion District.

The university broke ground on the 200,000-square-foot research, corporate innovation and office building on Nov. 4. The facility will share a plaza with the existing Ion building, fostering collaboration within the innovation space, according to Rice.

“The Arc will bring Rice’s extraordinary research and talent and Houston’s impactful innovation ecosystem into even closer connection with the industries and innovators working to solve some of the world’s most consequential challenges,” Rice President Reginald DesRoches said in an announcement. “That constant exchange of ideas and expertise will help move discoveries more rapidly from the laboratory to real-world impact.”

Construction is scheduled to be completed by Q2 2028. Rice Real Estate Co. is developing the project, and Rice University will occupy about 80,000 square feet in the building (about 40 percent). Preleasing has begun, with floor plans ranging from 28,000 to 31,000 square feet.

The Arc will feature conference and meeting spaces, an amenity lounge, fitness center, outdoor plazas, underground parking, and on-site retail and dining, according to the release.

It aims to host tenants focused on artificial intelligence and machine learning, data science, robotics, quantum science and engineering and energy, including Rice's new AI Foundry.

Rice says the AI Foundry will be a space where university experts and partners can support organizations with AI challenges. Rice recently committed to hiring 75 new AI-focused faculty and announced plans to launch a new Master of Artificial Intelligence (MAI) next fall.

“The AI Foundry is exactly the kind of collaboration the Arc is designed to enable,” Amy Dittmar, the Howard R. Hughes Provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Rice, added in the release. “By bringing Rice researchers together with industry partners in a shared environment, we can accelerate the movement of ideas from research into practical applications while helping organizations build the capabilities they need to succeed as AI continues to evolve.

Developers of The Arc are targeting LEED Gold certification by incorporating smart building automation and energy-saving features into the project's design. Rice first announced the project in September 2025.

Rendering courtesy Bogza

Houston battery tech startup FlowCellutions acquired by Katy energy co.

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Katy-based TerraFlow Energy, an energy storage and infrastructure company, has acquired Houston-based battery technology startup FlowCellutions. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

FlowCellutions still operates under its established name, but with the tagline “A TerraFlow Energy Company.” Becca Segel, founder and CEO of FlowCellutions, now runs the business as its president.

FlowCellutions specializes in electrochemical sensing, diagnostics, analytics, and testing that offer insights into battery chemistry, charging capabilities, and system performance.

“FlowCellutions has always been focused on developing better ways to understand what is happening inside a flow battery and using that information to improve how these systems perform,” Segal said in a press release. “Joining TerraFlow gives us the opportunity to apply that work at a much larger scale while continuing to build the capabilities and expertise that make FlowCellutions unique.”

The FlowCellutions platform supports data centers and other heavy users of power. It’s designed to help reduce operating costs, prevent failures and costly downtime, and extend battery lifetime from about seven years to more than 30 years.

Segel founded the company in 2022. A member of Greentown Labs, the company raised more than $2 million in non-dilutive funding and received $1.5 million in National Science Foundation funding earlier this year.

FlowCellutions is one of five finalists in the Energy Transition Business category of InnovationMap’s 2026 Houston Innovation Awards.

“FlowCellutions brings a depth of scientific and technical expertise that fits naturally with where TerraFlow is going,” Jon Parrella, CEO of TerraFlow, said in the release.

“As we move from developing these systems to deploying them at commercial scale, understanding performance at a deeper level matters,” he said. “Bringing FlowCellutions into TerraFlow strengthens that capability and gives both teams more opportunity to advance the technology.”TerraFlow, founded in 2024, develops long-duration energy storage and power infrastructure for data centers, industrial facilities, utilities and other large power consumers.

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This article originally appeared on EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

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