Exclusive: Canadian energy software company plans to grow local team and open Houston office

new to Hou

A Canadian software company is expanding its presence in Houston to meet the needs of its clients. Photo via Getty Images

One of the biggest obstacles heavy industry tech startups face — especially in oil and gas — is getting that first big customer, says Vicki Knott, co-founder and CEO of Crux OCM.

"Our biggest challenge is nobody wants to be first in energy," she tells InnovationMap.

But Crux OCM, based in Calgary, overcame that challenge and currently counts Houston-based Phillips 66 among its clients. The two companies announced a pilot program for Crux OCM's pipeBOT technology earlier this year.

Crux OCM's technology focuses on automating the control room operations — something that, like most automation software, increases revenue and reduces errors. The company, which was founded in 2017, also allows its clients consistency and reliability with its software.

"Even though the pumps and the equipment are automated, control room operators are still executing procedures, checklist, and rules of thumb on their own via screens," Knott says. "If you think of pilots and planes have autopilot software, why don't our control room operators? That's really the problem we set out to tackle."

Vicki Knott is co-founder and CEO of Crux OCM. Photo courtesy

Automation is certainly a growing opportunity for energy companies — especially in light of the pandemic that forced remote work and less on-site personnel across industries. Knott says just over a year ago, Crux OCM saw increased interest.

"We had a couple customers who had their capital budget cut when the pandemic hit and when oil went negative, and we had a couple customers who said they were doubling down on software like this," Knott explains.

The company has raised $3 million in venture funding, backed by Root Ventures, Angular Ventures, and Golden Ventures. Knott says another funding round is on the horizon as is growth for its Houston presence.

Crux OCM currently has three full-time Houston employees and is looking to grow that team in the next six months. Specifically, the local team will focus on sales, as well as product development, as the company's head of sales and senior product manager are both based here. As the local clientbase grows, Knott says they will also need to hire deployment engineers as well.

A new office to support this growing team is also in the works. Knott says she's looking for space in North Houston, and, depending on how comfortable people are returning to offices and meetings, it could open as early as later this year.

Calgary and Houston have a lot in common, Knott says, and she sees a very natural connection to the two regions. Knott plans to work six months of the year in Houston with the local office.

"A lot of the companies that head offices in Houston, they have head offices in Calgary," she says. "If a startup in Houston is getting traction, I think there's a natural movement to start in the Calgary market and vice versa."

Quorum Software is growing fast by adding to its suite of technology by making strategic acquisitions. Getty Images

Houston energy software company prepares to continue acquisition growth in 2020

M&A moves

A Houston software company specializing in cloud-based accounting and finance technology for oil and gas companies is growing at a rapid pace thanks to recent acquisitions.

Houston-based Quorum Software has grown its company over 100 employees last year, and Gene Austin, who was recently named CEO, says it's just the beginning.

The software solutions provider, which is a portfolio company of California-based private equity firm Thoma Bravo LLC since 2018, has big plans to continue the exponential growth with more acquisitions that diversify their portfolio of services and a Houston office expansion later this year.

According to Austin, he expects this growth spurred by M&A activity to double Quorum's revenue of $200 million in the next 3 to 5 years.

"We are always thinking about how to best serve our customers," Austin says. "We've made millions of dollars of investments in our support organization and cloud team services that are foundational to reinvigorate innovation and help our customers see how the future can unfold for them."

Courtesy of Quorum

Quorum is in the midst of a transformation into a software provider, focusing on cloud operations and digital software with significant acquisitions. Most recently, they launched OGsys on Demand, a cloud-based accounting software, after acquiring OGsys in August of 2019. The integration of OGsys expands the cloud-based capabilities for accounting products tailored for upstream medium-sized energy companies.

The launch was right on the heels of two other acquisitions that included Irving, Texas-based Archeio Technologies in June, a document classification smart search technology provider, and Pasadena, Texas-based Coastal Flow Measurement Inc. in March, a family of energy measurement services, one of which was Flow-Cal, a measurement data management software for oil and natural gas.

"Using innovation for us means not only acquiring new technologies but also investing in the right areas for our business and our current products," says Austin.

Quorum, who provides software solutions for a broad spectrum of energy companies' needs, from operations to accounting, plant management, and financial forecasting, began as a consulting firm more than 20 years ago. The company got its start with a customer-oriented structure for large oil and gas companies, known as enterprise organizations in the industry.

Eventually, the business transitioned to working with mid-size firms along with their larger set of clients. It was then when Quorum began to hear from clients their need for better accounting software that met the specific challenges of mid-size companies.

"Our products are designed to help our clients know much more about what's happening inside the business, making sure efficiency is possible," Austin tells InnovationMap. "We're doing that by using web applications that allow our clients to use mobile devices, that's a fairly new innovation in the energy world, we're trying to lead the way."

The focus on quick and efficient software technologies is reaping benefits for Quorum. Eighty percent of the largest oil and gas producers in the United States use Quorum, and its technology powers 80,000 miles of pipeline and that accounts for 80 percent of all-natural gas processed in the U.S.

"We believe because of the products we represent and the way we position our services, including our cloud-based accounting and financial application," Austin says. "We are well-positioned to help our clients do a great job of driving efficiency."

Penrose's advance process control software can increase production by 10 to 15 percent in downstream oil and gas refineries. Pexels

Houston oil and gas software company is increasing downstream productivity while lowering emissions

Efficient energy

In the next 30 years, the world will need 30 percent more energy due to population growth. While energy production will increase to keep up with demand, there is an increasing concern with the impact on the environment.

"How do you produce more energy without emission increases or more air quality pollution?" asks Erdin Guma, CFO of Penrose Technologies.

According to Guma, Penrose is uniquely well-suited to solve these serious challenges with its advanced process control technology increases the productivity of a chemical plant or refinery by 10 to 15 percent. The increase in productivity means the plants use less fuel to produce the energy. The plant then releases fewer emissions while producing the same amount of energy.

The technology itself is an automation software — similar to autonomous software on a plane. The autonomous operation increases downstream productivity, which brings about the energy efficiency.

"Our autopilot software (like a human operator) can manage and foresee any unexpected disturbances in the plant," Guma explains. "The achievements that the Penrose technology has brought about seemed impossible to chemical and process engineers in the refinery space a few years ago."

Penrose recently signed its first project with one of the biggest downstream firms in the world. With a network of refineries and petrochemical plants around the world, this contract could lead to a global roll out of the Penrose technology.

A ground-breaking technology for O&G
The word "Penrose" is taken from a penrose triangle, an impossible geometrical object. Guma explained that the energy efficiency brought about from their software seemed impossible at first. Penrose has been able to reduce emissions inside plants and refineries by 15 to 20 percent while keeping production at the same level.

In 2007, a chief engineer working at a major oil and gas processing plant in Houston procured the technology for one of his plants. When the engineer saw how well the technology worked, he founded Penrose Technologies in 2017 with Tom Senyard, CTO at Penrose, who originally developed the technology.

After starting the company at the end of 2007, Penrose joined Station Houston. Guma said that by becoming a member, Penrose was able to plug into a large refining and petrochemical network.

"Penrose Technologies is completely self-financed. We worked with [Station Houston] as we finalized the software to find out what potential customers thought of the product. For us, Station Houston has been a great sounding board to potential investors in the company," Guma says.

Guma also explained that while there has been an uptick in innovation in the last few years, the refining and petrochemical business is traditional a slow mover in the uptake of innovation.

"I think more major oil and gas firms are becoming attune to startups and the innovation solutions they offer," Guma says.

He went on to explain that the biggest challenge Penrose faces is perception. Since the software allows plant operators and engineers at the plant to be hands off in the processes, there is a concern with reliability. For industry insiders, any viable product must be reliable even when process conditions at the plant change, which can happen often.

"The Penrose software is maximum hand off control from operators, and the reliability of our software gives us a huge edge in other competing products that can be unreliable," Guma says.

Future growth on a global market
Given the pressing need for more environmentally sustainable energy production, new technology will be adopted in the oil and gas energy. As Guma explains it, there will be no way to continue producing energy as it's been produced for decades because the negative effects of air pollution and emissions will be too severe — particularly in the areas where refineries operate.

"We see the global market for this type of technology as severely underserved," Guma says. "It's a big and sizable market, and I think we can reach a $2 to $3 billion valuation in the next five years."

With a core team of six employees in Houston, Penrose's software is now commercially available, and the company is in full growth mode at this point. The software can be distributed directly to customers, but they are working to develop distribution with major engineering companies as well.

Guma is grateful to be in an environment conducive to energy start-ups. He sees Houston as a major advantage given its proximity to the energy sector.

"No technology rises up in a vacuum. Any new technology needs a good ecosystem to come from," says Guma. "Houston was that ecosystem for Penrose."

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Texas still ranks as No. 1 in U.S. for inbound moves, but growth dips

by the numbers

Texas continues to be the country’s No. 1 magnet for newcomers from other states, giving a boost to the state’s economy. However, Texas’ appeal weakened in 2024 compared with the previous year, due in large part to spiking home prices.

An analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by self-storage platform StorageCafe shows Texas saw net interstate migration of 76,000 people in 2024. Texas’ net interstate migration dropped nearly 50 percent from 2023, according to the analysis. Net migration refers to the number of incoming residents minus the number of outgoing residents.

California remained the top source of newcomers for Texas, sending nearly 77,000 residents to the Lone Star State in 2024, the analysis says. Florida ranked second, followed by New York, Colorado and Illinois.

“These trends reveal Texas’ continued pull from both high-cost coastal markets and other large Sun Belt states, resulting in a mix of affordability-driven and job-driven relocation,” StorageCafe says.

Putting a damper on the influx of new residents: a roughly 124 percent surge in Texas home prices over the past decade, according to StorageCafe.

“While the state remains significantly more affordable than California, its top feeder state, the once-wide pricing gap has narrowed,” says StorageCafe. “For many movers, Texas is still a relative bargain, but no longer an undisputed one.”

Nonetheless, Texas keeps attracting young, highly educated people, which bodes well for the state’s long-term economic outlook, StorageCafe says. More than half of new arrivals to Texas in 2024 held at least a bachelor’s degree, and the age of newcomers averaged 32.

Where are most of these young, highly educated newcomers settling?

Lloyd Potter, former Texas state demographer, tells StorageCafe that population growth in Texas is happening most rapidly in suburban “ring counties” at the expense of slowing growth in urban cores. Ring counties are on the outskirts of major metro areas.

“Many people are moving from urban cores to suburban rings seeking lower costs, newer housing, better schools, and more space,” Potter says. “Typically, a move to a suburban county will be within commuting or hybrid‑commuting distance of major metro economies.”

Artemis II makes historic call to space station with help from Houston Mission Control

History in the making

Still aglow from their triumphant lunar flyby, the Artemis II astronauts made more history Tuesday, April 7: calling their friends aboard the International Space Station hundreds of thousands of miles away as they headed home from the moon.

It was the first moonship-to-spaceship radio linkup ever. NASA's Apollo crews had no off-the-planet company back in the 1960s and 1970s, the last time humanity set sail for deep space.

"We have been waiting for this like you can’t imagine,” Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman called out.

For Christina Koch on Artemis II and Jessica Meir aboard the space station, it marked a joyous space reunion despite being 230,000 miles (370,000 kilometers) apart. The two teamed up for the world's first all-female spacewalk in 2019 outside the orbiting lab.

Koch told her “astro-sister” that she'd hoped to meet up with her again in space “but I never thought it would be like this — it's amazing.”

“I'm so happy that we are back in space together,” Meir replied, “even if we are a few miles apart.”

Houston's Mission Control arranged the cosmic chitchat between the four lunar travelers and the space station's three NASA and one French residents.

Koch described being awe-struck by not just the beauty of Earth, “but how much blackness there was around it.”

“It just made it even more special. It truly emphasized how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive,” she told the space station crew. “The specialness and preciousness of that really is emphasized” when viewing the home planet from the moon.

By late Tuesday afternoon, the Artemis II astronauts had beamed back more than 50 gigabytes' worth of pictures and other data from the previous day's lunar rendezvous, which set a new distance record for humanity. The highlight: an Earthset photo reminiscent of Apollo 8's Earthrise shot from 1968.

"While they are inspirational and, I think, allow all of us to really feel a little bit of what they were feeling, there's also a lot of science hidden inside of those images," said Mission Control's lead lunar scientist Kelsey Young. “The conversations and the science lessons learned are just beginning."

During a debriefing with Young, the astronauts recounted how they spotted a cascade of pinpricks of light on the lunar surface from impacting cosmic debris. The flashes lasted mere milliseconds and coincided by chance with Monday evening's total solar eclipse.

Young said it was too soon to know whether the crew witnessed an actual meteor shower or more random, run-of-the-mill micrometeoroid hits. Either way, there were “audible screams of delight” in the science operations center, she said.

Koch described being awe-struck by not just the beauty of Earth, “but how much blackness there was around it.”

“It just made it even more special. It truly emphasized how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive,” she told the space station crew. “The specialness and preciousness of that really is emphasized” when viewing the home planet from the moon.

The first lunar explorers since Apollo 17 in 1972, Wiseman and his crew are aiming for a splashdown off the San Diego coast on Friday to wrap up the nearly 10-day test flight. The recovery ship USS John P. Murtha left port Tuesday for the target zone.

It sets the stage for next year's Artemis III, a lunar lander docking demo in orbit around Earth. Artemis IV will follow in 2028 with two astronauts attempting to land near the lunar south pole.

As for the Orion capsule’s pesky potty, Mission Control assured the astronauts that no maintenance was required Tuesday. The toilet has been on-and-off limits to the crew ever since last week’s launch, prompting them to rely on a backup bag-and-funnel system for urinating.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told the crew following the lunar flyby Monday night: “We definitely have to fix some of the plumbing” ahead of the next Artemis mission. Engineers suspect a clogged filter in the overboard flushing system.

Aside from the toilet and other relatively minor matters, the mission has gone well, Isaacman noted at a news conference Tuesday, “but I'll breathe easier when we get through reentry and everybody's under chutes and in the water.”

AI-powered Houston startup helps restaurants boost customer loyalty

order up

It’s no secret that restaurant trends move fast and margins run thin. And with the proliferation of platforms like Uber Eats, DoorDash and Easy Cater, customer loyalty is fleeting.

The solution?

How about an AI-powered restaurant technology platform that helps restaurant brands cut back on third-party platforms in favor of driving direct discovery, conversion and loyalty?

Enter Saivory. Founded in 2025 by Stephen Klein, a software investor, and Fajita Pete’s restaurateur Hugh Guill, the Houston-based startup aims to help eateries better understand and activate guest behavior across digital channels as AI increasingly reshapes how consumers discover and engage with brands.

In less than a year, Saivory has partnered with Shipley Do-Nuts and Fajita Pete’s to bring AI-powered ordering to life.

“With Saivory, we were able to answer the question of, ‘what if the ordering process could be reduced to a single step, where customers simply tell us what they want and AI takes care of the rest?’” Klein tells InnovationMap.

The Houston-based startup made such an immediate impact that it was selected as a semi-finalist during Start-Up Alley at MURTEC, the restaurant industry’s leading technology conference, which took place last month in Las Vegas.

“Houston is a great hub for technology innovation, and we were proud to represent the city at MURTEC this year,” says Klein. “We didn’t win, but we were able to talk about some of the work that we have existing in the market for clients right now and a little bit about what we’re working on in the future.”

In the current restaurant technology ecosystem, the third-party aggregators own the customer attention that brings volume to restaurants, while also taking big commissions and having control over the end relationships with the customer.

That can often make it difficult for restaurants to grow loyalty and repeat business from customers. Saivory aims to level the playing field for restaurants, helping them stay more connected to their customers.

Take Saivory’s recent application with Shipley’s Do-Nuts, for example.

Saivory powered the donut giant’s AI-ordering and launched Shipley's website and mobile app to support its over 300 locations in Texas alone.

Shipley’s new AI-powered assistant helps users create personalized order recommendations based on individual or group preferences. And unlike standard chatbox features, the new assistant makes custom recommendations based on multiple customer factors, including budgetary habits, individual flavor preferences and order size. It can also be used for large catering orders.

“They're seeing more traffic to the site and they're seeing when customers use our AI-enabled flows,” Klein says. “And they're seeing higher basket sizes, bigger tickets, by about 25 percent.”

Klein says Saivory’s technology helps strengthen first-party digital relationships, reduce friction and cart abandonment, improve average order value, and delivers personalized, efficient experiences.

“It’s a win-win: the customer gets the right order quickly, while the restaurant gets a bigger margin,” he adds.

Additionally, the technology makes it easier for restaurants to share rewards, loyalty and discounts, ultimately growing more direct traffic and making restaurants less reliant on third-party delivery apps.

Next up for Saivory is adding new components to its platform to enhance the relationship between restaurant and customer, as well as technology around making it easier for restaurants to get found on Google.

“A lot of people are still searching for the best donuts near me,” Klein says. “Or what’s the best Mexican food near me? Customers will increasingly move to AI, where they’re going to ask where they should eat dinner and expect it to just order them dinner. They will eventually expect the technology to know how to do that. So that’s what we’re driving at.”

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