Meet 5 of the fastest-growing scaleup companies in Houston

houston innovation awards

These five scaleups stood out to the judges of the 2024 Houston Innovation Awards. Photo via Getty Images

The 2024 Houston Innovation Awards will feature a new category: Scaleup of the Year, which honors a Bayou City company that's seen impressive growth in 2024.

From biotech companies to decarbonization startups, the inaugural finalists have expanded internationally, moved to larger facilities, completed clinical trials and more. Read on to learn more about these fast-growing startups.

Secure your tickets to the 2024 Houston Innovation Awards next Thursday, November 14, at TMC Helix Park.


Cart.com, a unified commerce and logistics solutions provider for B2C and B2B companies

With the acquisition of Amify, Cart.com has expanded its workforce and grown its suite of services. Photo courtesy of Cart.com

Clinching unicorn status with its 2023 series C raise, Cart.com is on a mission to unify commerce across sales and distribution channels and digital and physical capabilities with its omnichannel enterprise-grade software, services and logistics.

Founded in 2020 with nine acquisitions and $759.2 million raised to date, according to Crunchbase, Cart.com's recent achievements includes acquiring Pacsun’s fulfillment operators, brining a 2 million-square-foot facility online, expanding its executive team, and more.

"In the last 12 months, Cart.com has dramatically grown its fulfillment network’s scale and technological capabilities," writes CEO Omail Tariq in his Houston Innovation Awards application.

"We have been laser-focused on improving quality, performance and efficiency at scale while continuing to aggressively grow our customer base, expand our capabilities to customers in new industries and grow our physical presence to new locations," he continues. "Prioritizing our strategic growth initiatives has been critical in the current macroeconomic environment as profitable growth remains paramount for our team."

In 2021, Cart.com moved its headquarters to Austin, with most of the leadership team remaining in Houston. Two years later, the company announced its HQ return to the Bayou City.

"We've found Houston's business and university communities to be incredibly supportive of our efforts and have found the city to be a place that is both easier and more affordable to bring together our global employee population at more regular intervals," Tariq adds in the app.

Coya Therapeutics, a clinical-stage company developing therapies for neurodegenerative, autoimmune, and metabolic diseases

Houston company with revolutionary neurodegenerative disease treatment shares milestones since IPOCoya Therapeutics rang the closing bell at Nasdaq last week, celebrating six months since its IPO, new data from trials, and additions to its team. Photo via LinkedIn

Revolutionary biotech company Coya Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: COYA) may have closed its IPO in January 2023 for more than $15 million, but the company has made some of its most significant strides in the development of its lead product that prevents the further spreading of neurodegenerative diseases this year.

Known as COYA 302, the product uses a unique dual mechanism that is now being developed for the treatment of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. The company published its phase 1 proof-of-concept study in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Neurology that showed COYA 302's ability to stop clinical progression in ALS at 24 weeks in combination therapy, which helped earn the company a $5 million in strategic investment from the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation to continue to develop the product for a planned Phase 2 trial focused on FTD.

Last year the company also added to its C Suite, naming Dr. Arun Swaminathan as chief business officer and Dr. Fred Grossman as president and chief medical officer.

Coya merged with Nicoya Health Inc. and raised $10 million in its series A in 2020.

NanoTech Materials, a chemical manufacturer that integrates novel heat-control technology with thermal insulation, fireproofing, and cool roof coatings to drastically improve efficiency and safety

Growing Houston startup moves into 43,000-square-foot facility amid 'hypergrowth phase'NanoTech Materials celebrated its move into a new facility — a 43,000-square-foot space in Katy, Texas, this week

Mike Francis, co-founder and CEO of NanoTech Materials, told InnovationMap earlier this year that it was in a "hype growth" phase—and meant it.

NanoTech, known for its proprietary Insulative Ceramic ParticleTM (ICP) that uses nanotechnology to optimize energy efficiency and heat control in the built environment, expanded into a new 43,000-square-foot facility this year and tripled its valuation in the last two years, according to its Innovation Awards application. The company also expanded into the Middle East and Singapore and successfully scaled up its NanoTech Cool Roof Coat to commercial markets.

The company closed a $5 million seed round in 2020 and an oversubscribed Series A round last year for $13 million. It was the first company selected for the Houston-based Halliburton Labs in 2021 and joined the Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator in 2023.

Square Robot, an advanced robotics company serving the energy industry and beyond by providing submersible robots for storage tank inspections

Square Robot has a team of 15 in Houston. Photo courtesy\u00a0of Square Robot

Submersible robotics company Square Robot launched its Houston office in 2019 and expanded in the Bayou City this past year.

According to the company's Innovation Award application, the company doubled its fleet of autonomous, submersible robots that service the energy industry, deploying to Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Its robots are specifically used for storage tank inspections and eliminating the need for humans to enter dangerous and toxic environments.

Square Robot moved to a new, customer-facing Houston facility this year and also developed a new innovative technology that's able to gather phased ultrasonic readings on insulated tank shells while the tank is operational.

The company closed a Series A round in 2018 for $6 million.

Syzygy Plasmonics, a company that's decarbonizing chemical production with a light-powered reactor platform that electrifies the production of hydrogen, syngas, and fuel with reliable, low-cost solutions

Houston climatetech startup selected for inaugural global entrepreneur competitionSyzygy Plasmonics is going to be competing in Gastech's new startup competition. Photo courtesy of Syzygy

Known for the world’s first light-powered reactor cell for industrial chemical reactions, Syzygy Plasmonics began taking orders earlier this year for its Rigel reactor cell after meeting initial performance targets. The cell enables a customer to produce up to five tons of low-carbon hydrogen per day.

The groundbreaking technology earned the company regional, national and global attention. Fast Company magazine placed the company on its energy innovation list. It was also named a finalist for Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur Of The Year 2024 Gulf South Award and was invited to participate in Gastech's global entrepreneur competition.

The company most recently raised $76 million in a Series C round in 2022.

From Your Site Articles
Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Property Showcase

Houston scientists develop breakthrough AI-driven process to design, decode genetic circuits

biotech breakthrough

Researchers at Rice University have developed an innovative process that uses artificial intelligence to better understand complex genetic circuits.

A study, published in the journal Nature, shows how the new technique, known as “Combining Long- and Short-range Sequencing to Investigate Genetic Complexity,” or CLASSIC, can generate and test millions of DNA designs at the same time, which, according to Rice.

The work was led by Rice’s Caleb Bashor, deputy director for the Rice Synthetic Biology Institute and member of the Ken Kennedy Institute. Bashor has been working with Kshitij Rai and Ronan O’Connell, co-first authors on the study, on the CLASSIC for over four years, according to a news release.

“Our work is the first demonstration that you can use AI for designing these circuits,” Bashor said in the release.

Genetic circuits program cells to perform specific functions. Finding the circuit that matches a desired function or performance "can be like looking for a needle in a haystack," Bashor explained. This work looked to find a solution to this long-standing challenge in synthetic biology.

First, the team developed a library of proof-of-concept genetic circuits. It then pooled the circuits and inserted them into human cells. Next, they used long-read and short-read DNA sequencing to create "a master map" that linked each circuit to how it performed.

The data was then used to train AI and machine learning models to analyze circuits and make accurate predictions for how untested circuits might perform.

“We end up with measurements for a lot of the possible designs but not all of them, and that is where building the (machine learning) model comes in,” O’Connell explained in the release. “We use the data to train a model that can understand this landscape and predict things we were not able to generate data on.”

Ultimately, the researchers believe the circuit characterization and AI-driven understanding can speed up synthetic biology, lead to faster development of biotechnology and potentially support more cell-based therapy breakthroughs by shedding new light on how gene circuits behave, according to Rice.

“We think AI/ML-driven design is the future of synthetic biology,” Bashor added in the release. “As we collect more data using CLASSIC, we can train more complex models to make predictions for how to design even more sophisticated and useful cellular biotechnology.”

The team at Rice also worked with Pankaj Mehta’s group in the department of physics at Boston University and Todd Treangen’s group in Rice’s computer science department. Research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, Office of Naval Research, the Robert J. Kleberg Jr. and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation, the American Heart Association, National Library of Medicine, the National Science Foundation, Rice’s Ken Kennedy Institute and the Rice Institute of Synthetic Biology.

James Collins, a biomedical engineer at MIT who helped establish synthetic biology as a field, added that CLASSIC is a new, defining milestone.

“Twenty-five years ago, those early circuits showed that we could program living cells, but they were built one at a time, each requiring months of tuning,” said Collins, who was one of the inventors of the toggle switch. “Bashor and colleagues have now delivered a transformative leap: CLASSIC brings high-throughput engineering to gene circuit design, allowing exploration of combinatorial spaces that were previously out of reach. Their platform doesn’t just accelerate the design-build-test-learn cycle; it redefines its scale, marking a new era of data-driven synthetic biology.”

Axiom Space wins NASA contract for fifth private mission, lands $350M in financing

ready for takeoff

Editor's note: This story has been updated to include information about Axiom's recent funding.

Axiom Space, a Houston-based space infrastructure company that’s developing the first commercial space station, has forged a deal with NASA to carry out the fifth civilian-staffed mission to the International Space Station.

Axiom Mission 5 is scheduled to launch in January 2027, at the earliest, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew of non-government astronauts is expected to spend up to 14 days docked at the International Space Station (ISS). Various science and research activities will take place during the mission.

The crew for the upcoming mission hasn’t been announced. Previous Axiom missions were commanded by retired NASA astronauts Michael López-Alegría, the company’s chief astronaut, and Peggy Whitson, the company’s vice president of human spaceflight.

“All four previous [Axiom] missions have expanded the global community of space explorers, diversifying scientific investigations in microgravity, and providing significant insight that is benefiting the development of our next-generation space station, Axiom Station,” Jonathan Cirtain, president and CEO of Axiom, said in a news release.

As part of Axiom’s new contract with NASA, Voyager Technologies will provide payload services for Axiom’s fifth mission. Voyager, a defense, national security, and space technology company, recently announced a four-year, $24.5 million contract with NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to provide mission management services for the ISS.

Axiom also announced today, Feb. 12, that it has secured $350 million in a financing round led by Type One Ventures and Qatar Investment Authority.

The company shared in a news release that the funding will support the continued development of its commercial space station, known as Axiom Station, and the production of its Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) under its NASA spacesuit contract.

NASA awarded Axiom a contract in January 2020 to create Axiom Station. The project is currently underway.

"Axiom Space isn’t just building hardware, it’s building the backbone of humanity’s next era in orbit," Tarek Waked, Founding General Partner at Type One Ventures, said in a news release. "Their rare combination of execution, government trust, and global partnerships positions them as the clear successor-architect for life after the ISS. This is how the United States continues to lead in space.”

Houston edtech company closes oversubscribed $3M seed round

fresh funding

Houston-based edtech company TrueLeap Inc. closed an oversubscribed seed round last month.

The $3.3 million round was led by Joe Swinbank Family Limited Partnership, a venture capital firm based in Houston. Gamper Ventures, another Houston firm, also participated with additional strategic partners.

TrueLeap reports that the funding will support the large-scale rollout of its "edge AI, integrated learning systems and last-mile broadband across underserved communities."

“The last mile is where most digital transformation efforts break down,” Sandip Bordoloi, CEO and president of TrueLeap, said in a news release. “TrueLeap was built to operate where bandwidth is limited, power is unreliable, and institutions need real systems—not pilots. This round allows us to scale infrastructure that actually works on the ground.”

True Leap works to address the digital divide in education through its AI-powered education, workforce systems and digital services that are designed for underserved and low-connectivity communities.

The company has created infrastructure in Africa, India and rural America. Just this week, it announced an agreement with the City of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo to deploy a digital twin platform for its public education system that will allow provincial leaders to manage enrollment, staffing, infrastructure and performance with live data.

“What sets TrueLeap apart is their infrastructure mindset,” Joe Swinbank, General Partner at Joe Swinbank Family Limited Partnership, added in the news release. “They are building the physical and digital rails that allow entire ecosystems to function. The convergence of edge compute, connectivity, and services makes this a compelling global infrastructure opportunity.”

TrueLeap was founded by Bordoloi and Sunny Zhang and developed out of Born Global Ventures, a Houston venture studio focused on advancing immigrant-founded technology. It closed an oversubscribed pre-seed in 2024.

View All Listings