Houston-based Corva, an AI-optimized analytics company, is in the process of hiring — a lot. Photo via corva.ai

While the oil and gas industry may be in store for sluggish growth in 2020, that's hardly the case for Houston-based energy tech startup Corva AI LLC.

Corva — which offers a real-time data analytics platform for drilling and completion (the stage when a well is prepared for production) — added 85 employees last year, mostly in Houston. And it's on track to make 150 new hires in 2020, including software developers, researchers, drilling engineers, and data analysts, says Courtney Diezi, the company's general manager. Two-thirds of this year's new hires will work in Houston, she says.

Diezi says the company's headcount currently stands at 120, with 100 employees in Houston and 20 in Ukraine.

Corva has expanded so much and so quickly that it outgrew its previous 11,000-square-foot office and is now at The Cannon, a coworking space and innovation hub in the Energy Corridor. It's set to move later this year to a new 40,000-square-foot space at The Cannon.

Founded in 2014 by CEO Ryan Dawson, Corva has raised just $3 million in outside funding to propel its growth.

"Our business has grown exponentially at the same pace as companies raising hundreds of millions in funding," Dawson says. "While the startup world has chased endless rounds of funding with the notion of either becoming a unicorn — or dying — we have focused on creating a company that cares deeply about our employees and a business that lasts 100 years."

Dawson describes Corva as the "modern brains" of drillings and completions. Oil and gas equipment sends millions of datapoints to Corva to help make complex decisions about drilling operations, she says. About 40 customers use Corva's technology.

In a 2019 news release, Dawson said Corva gauges its success "by the number of days we save on rigs, the costs we can quantifiably cut, and the number of catastrophic events we prevent." Corva's technology has saved millions of dollars for its customers and reduced the length of drilling projects by as many as three days, he said.

"Corva's challenge is to change the behavior of drillers who work for somebody else," the Journal of Petroleum Technology reported in 2019. "The fast-growing company has no shortage of users. Retaining those customers will require convincing oil companies that the real-time drilling data and analysis is creating enough value to justify the cost."

Corva's user-focused approach to developing technology helps attract and retain customers. Executives say they consider Corva a tech company that operates in the oil and gas sector rather than an oil and gas company that happens to develop software.

"Our software platform rivals Netflix and Twitter in terms of giant datasets and real-time processing," Diezi says. "Without a core expertise and founding team in software, we wouldn't be able to provide the amazing technology we do — it's too central to what we do. Corva is the perfect mixture of oil industry veterans and software whiz kids. Our customers love to work with us because we speak their language but provide world-class products solving hard problems."

As it continues to enlarge its workforce, Corva seeks to foster a workplace that embraces both oil industry veterans and software whiz kids.

"We want to be the most admired workplace in Houston, with a Google-like status both for our amazing products and our company culture," Diezi says.

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Axiom Space-tested cancer drug advances to clinical trials

mission critical

A cancer-fighting drug tested aboard several Axiom Space missions is moving forward to clinical trials.

Rebecsinib, which targets a cancer cloning and immune evasion gene, ADAR1, has received FDA approval to enter clinical trials under active Investigational New Drug (IND) status, according to a news release. The drug was tested aboard Axiom Mission 2 (Ax-2) and Axiom Mission 3 (Ax-3). It was developed by Aspera Biomedicine, led by Dr. Catriona Jamieson, director of the UC San Diego Sanford Stem Cell Institute (SSCI).

The San Diego-based Aspera team and Houston-based Axiom partnered to allow Rebecsinib to be tested in microgravity. Tumors have been shown to grow more rapidly in microgravity and even mimic how aggressive cancers can develop in patients.

“In terms of tumor growth, we see a doubling in growth of these little mini-tumors in just 10 days,” Jamieson explained in the release.

Rebecsinib took part in the patient-derived tumor organoid testing aboard the International Space Station. Similar testing is planned to continue on Axiom Station, the company's commercial space station that's currently under development.

Additionally, the drug will be tested aboard Ax-4 under its active IND status, which was targeted to launch June 25.

“We anticipate that this monumental mission will inform the expanded development of the first ADAR1 inhibitory cancer stem cell targeting drug for a broad array of cancers," Jamieson added.

According to Axiom, the milestone represents the potential for commercial space collaborations.

“We’re proud to work with Aspera Biomedicines and the UC San Diego Sanford Stem Cell Institute, as together we have achieved a historic milestone, and we’re even more excited for what’s to come,” Tejpaul Bhatia, the new CEO of Axiom Space, said in the release. “This is how we crack the code of the space economy – uniting public and private partners to turn microgravity into a launchpad for breakthroughs.”