3 Houston tech innovators to know this week

Who's who

Tech startups are popping up across industries from real estate to oil and gas, and these three founders are among the leaders in technology. Courtesy images

Often, technology and innovation are mistaken for each other. While not mutually exclusive, both tech and innovation work well together in Houston across all industries — from oil and gas to real estate and social media. These three founders engaged technology for their individual startups.

Srini Katta, founder and CEO of Social Chains

Courtesy of Social Chains

As a social media user, your data is already out there and being used for marketing purposes. But, rather than the Facebooks or Googles of the world making a profit, Srini Katta wanted to create a platform where users made a profit off their own data.

"On our platform, the user is a stakeholder. Our platform distributes 50 percent of the profits to the users," he says.

Social Chains already has 5,000 users and, Katta says, that's with little to no marketing efforts, which Katta is about to launch.

Martin Kay, founder and CEO of Entera Technology

Courtesy of Entera

Martin Kay, who splits his time between Houston and the Bay Area for his startup Entera Technologies, knew there had to be a better way for people searching for a home to buy. He drew a comparison between homebuyers and Netflix viewers to create Entera's software.

"We're a little bit like Netflix," he says. "They go out and get content from everyone, and they begin to watch your behavior. So, Netflix has 2,000 profiles and you probably fit five or six of those. We have almost 100 profiles and what we do is say, we're going to understand what you want, watch your behavior and instead of giving you 40,000 properties on a big map, we actually match you based on your preferences, to the five or six houses that are best for you."

Houston-based Entera has grown as the platform loads more and more data for its users to engage with.

Luther Birdzell, CEO and founder of OAG Analytics

Courtesy of OAG Analytics

Luther Birdzell always knew he wanted to run his own company, but the software and analytics professional worked in various industries before realizing that oil and gas had a huge opportunity for savings using analytics. He founded OAG Analytics in 2013 to help provide a solution for these companies.

"When I founded OAG Analytics, our mission then — and still is today — was to build a platform for the upstream oil and gas industry that enables them to manage their data, introduces world-class machine learning in minutes without having to write a single line of code, and allow them to run simulations on the resulting analysis," Birdzell says.

The company has grown to 25 employees and tripled its revenue last year. The team is forecasting another year of high grow for 2019.

This Houston company has the key to a more exact searching process when it comes to finding a new home to buy. Courtesy photo

Tech company uses machine learning to buy homes in Houston

game changer

For most consumers, the home buying process includes a very specific online search. People specify their neighborhood requirements, the number of bedrooms or bathrooms, backyard size, and more — yet still, the search results in a staggering amount of homes. It's way more than anyone can reasonably look at.

That's where Martin Kay and Entera Technology, the company he founded and is CEO of, come in. Kay, a 20-year veteran of the tech sector, who's bought multiple homes as rental properties, realized the way to solve the problem of that kind of search engine overload was through machine learning. He now works with some of the largest home-buying companies in the world, helping them find properties that match the specifications they have to attract the clients they want.

"All residential real estate is a consumer product," he says. "Ultimately, the people who are going to live in that home care most about, is it a nice home with a big backyard neat good schools, is it safe? The [home buying] companies are trying to figure out what do the end consumers really care about so we can give them exactly what they need?"

To do so, Entera collects data — lots and lots of it. Kay and his team have taught their software programs what a chef's kitchen is, for example. They did so by compiling tens of thousands of photos of kitchens and telling the software, "This is a kitchen." Then, they taught it to recognize what makes a chef's kitchen — a larger size, more than one sink, high-end appliances. They used the same techniques in identifying things like millennial-friendly neighborhoods or neighborhoods that were up-and-coming on the real estate scene. They draw from listings available with the Houston Association of Realtors and beyond, a vast array of tens of thousands of homes.

Officially launched in 2017, Entera blends its data collection and analysis with on-the-ground service. After Entera's proprietary software collects what it thinks home-buying companies want, members of Entera's service team go out to look at the homes.

While Entera has been working with larger home-buying companies — like firms that buy tens of thousands of homes every year — Kay says they have begun working with smaller entities, and he figures within the next few years, Entera will be using the same data collection and machine learning to work with individual home buyers.

Based in Houston, Entera has operations in New York and San Francisco as well. The company has 17 full-time employees, along with approximately 100 contractors in its markets. And while Kay understand a human touch is needed in business, he loves that he can use a data model to present unbiased opinions to his clients.

"[Real estate] actually affects people's lives meaningfully," Kay says. "Real estate data — where you live, what your neighborhood is, how you make that choice — …this data matters to people in a way they can tangibly touch and understand and feel. We can help people make what are big, complex choices that are often highly ambiguous. I love it because it matters. You can measure how it matters immediately."

Data-driven tech

Courtesy of Entera

Entera focuses on collecting data and analysis and pairs it with on-the-ground service. After Entera's proprietary software collects what it thinks home-buying companies want, members of Entera's service team go out to look at the homes.

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Intuitive Machines lands $600M satellite deal, NASA ‘spacecraft bus’ contract

space deals

Houston-based space infrastructure company Intuitive Machines has scored two astronomical deals.

The deals add to the company’s soaring success. As of June 30, Intuitive Machines had a record-high $1.8 billion backlog of orders, a $1.5 billion increase from the end of last year. The current backlog includes orders for more than 80 spacecraft.

The company, which went public in 2023, expects this year’s revenue to total $900 million to $1 billion. In the first half of 2026, Intuitive Machines generated nearly $393 million in revenue.

Intuitive Machines estimates its total available market is valued at more than $150 billion.

$600 million-plus deal represents ‘important milestone’

On Monday, Intuitive Machines said it picked up a $600 million-plus deal to develop three commercial satellites for an undisclosed customer over the course of about two years.

Intuitive Machines says it will design, manufacture, set up and support several spacecraft “for a critical communications infrastructure mission.”

Steve Altemus, the company’s CEO, says the deal represents “an important milestone for Intuitive Machines and reflects the confidence our customers place in our ability to deliver high-performance spacecraft for a broad range of mission needs.”

Company nails down NASA deal for ‘spacecraft bus’

A day after announcing the $600 million-plus deal, Intuitive Machines said it secured a new contract with NASA.

Intuitive Machines says NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California will use the company’s IM 300 “spacecraft bus” for an EAGLE-VSWIR Earth observation mission. The mission is scheduled to launch in 2028.

Aside from supplying the IM 300 bus, Intuitive Machines will carry out mission support services.

The low-Earth-orbit mission will be equipped with Intuitive Machines’ hyperspectral visible to shortwave infrared (VSWIR) instrument. This technology sees colors and details that aren’t visible to the human eye.

The instrument is “designed to perform surface biology and geology observations from Earth orbit while demonstrating technologies that could support future lunar and Mars exploration missions,” Intuitive Machines says.

Intuitive Machines builds mission-critical spacecraft, systems, and infrastructure for business and government customers. To date, the company has produced more than 300 spacecraft, delivered over 575 pounds of payload to the moon and launched about 100 satellites.

9 Houston-based companies make Fortune Global 500 list in 2026

Worldwide Rankings

Nine Houston companies landed on the 2026 Fortune Global 500 list, which ranks the world's largest corporations by revenue for the 2025 fiscal year.

Houston's showing on the list was led by energy companies, with Spring’s ExxonMobil claiming the top local spot. Here’s what Houston-area companies made the list, and where they ranked:

No. 15 ExxonMobil
No. 36 Chevron
No. 61 Phillip 66
No. 159 Sysco
No. 243 ConocoPhillips
No. 292 Enterprise Products Partners
No. 343 Plains GP Holdings
No. 460 SLB
No. 481 Hewlett Packard Enterprise

After 12 years as No.1, Arkansas-based Walmart was replaced this year by Seattle-based Amazon in the top spot for 2026. Amazon achieved this by bringing in $700 billion in revenue in 2025, representing a 12 percent increase from the previous year.

"Across global business, we see again and again that the leaders who are winning are those who embrace change,” Alyson Shontell, Fortune's editor in chief and chief content officer, said in a news release. "Amazon has topped the Fortune Global 500, knocking Walmart off its pedestal. The company has continually reinvented itself across new businesses and bold bets—including a $200 billion capital commitment, largely to building its capacity for AI and cloud computing, in this year alone."

The U.S. has 141 companies on the 2026 Fortune Global 500 list, which is the most of any country. Companies in America generated $15.5 trillion in aggregate revenues, a 6 percent increase from the previous year.

The number of women CEOs at Fortune Global 500 companies reached a record of 34 top leaders, who represented 6.8 percent of CEOs of companies on the list.

Technology was the standout growth industry on this year’s list, with 38 companies earning revenues that grew 20 percent to about $4 trillion in 2025, with profits climbing 36 percent to $835 billion. The financial sector accounted for the largest share of companies on the list again, with 123 companies in that sector. The energy sector claimed the No. 2 industry spot with 77 companies making the list.

In June, the Fortune 500 list was released, and Texas led the United States with 57 Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the state, generating $2.8 trillion in combined revenue.

Fast-growing Houston real estate startup surges to No. 7 on Inc. 5000

growth report

Houston-based Epique Realty has ridden the AI wave to rank among the Inc. 5000’s 10 fastest-growing private companies.

With three-year revenue growth of 23,210 percent, the AI-powered real estate brokerage appears at No. 7 on this year’s Inc. 5000 list. The 2026 list ranks private companies based on percentage revenue growth from 2022 to 2025.

Epique, founded in 2021, also ranks as the No. 1 fastest-growing company in Houston, No. 1 fastest-growing real estate company in the U.S., and No. 2 fastest-growing company in Texas.

Epique’s annual revenue surpasses $91 million

Between 2022 and 2025, the company’s annual revenue skyrocketed from $391,654 to more than $91.2 million. In 2025, the brokerage closed more than 23,000 deals and surpassed $7 billion in total sales, elevating Epique to the country’s 14th-largest real estate brokerage as measured by volume.

Epique’s network has more than 4,000 agents.

“To debut in the top 10 of the Inc. 5000 is absolute proof that when you relentlessly put agents first, exponential growth takes care of itself,” co-founder and CEO Joshua Miller said in a news release.

“We didn’t achieve this by following the industry playbook; we achieved this by burning it,” Miller added. “By fully funding our agents’ success through free health care, proprietary AI, and world-class leads, we’ve built a company where agents can finally thrive.”

The company’s other co-founders are Chris Miller, chief operating officer and vice president of expansion, and Janice Delci, chief financial officer.

Epique expands business to Canada, Mexico, Australia

The Millers and Delci have guided the company’s rapid expansion.

“Scaling our corporate support team to match [our] hyper-growth while seamlessly expanding across all 50 states and internationally to Canada, Australia, and Mexico takes an incomparable operational infrastructure,” Miller said.

“We have built an enterprise-grade technology ecosystem that allows us to absorb overhead and empower our agents at lightning speed,” he added. “This ranking validates that our disruptive model is working, and it is completely redefining the global industry standard.”

Epique launched its platform in 2023, touting itself as the industry’s first AI-powered brokerage. The startup’s platform provides AI tools for real estate agents to improve their marketing, streamline content creation, and boost engagement with clients and prospects.

Among Epique’s AI tools are:

ChatGPT for generation of property descriptions
AI-assisted creation of blog posts and agents’ bios
Production of Instagram quotes for social media marketing

“When we started Epique, we wanted to build a company that genuinely cared for its agents’ financial and physical well-being,” Delci says. “To see that vision translate into this level of historic record-breaking growth is a beautiful testament to the true power of radical generosity.”

Epique and fellow honorees will be recognized Oct. 14-16 at the 2026 Inc. 5000 Conference & Gala in Dallas.

Six other Houston-area companies land in top 250

Here are the six other Houston-area companies that claimed spots in the top 250 on the Inc. 5000 list. Each company name is followed by its ranking, headquarters city, and three-year growth rate.

No. 27 Empact Technologies, 8,275 percent
No. 60 Action1, 4,512 percent
No 75 Signs By G, 3,684 percent
No. 79 The ’Pause Life, 3,469 percent (Galveston)
No. 110 Turtlebox Audio, 2,576 percent
No. 178 Dahnani Private Equity Group, 1,904 percent (Stafford)

How did companies in Texas’ other major metros fare?

Here’s a breakdown of companies in the Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, and San Antonio areas that made the top 250 on the Inc. 5000. Again, each company name is followed by its ranking, headquarters city, and three-year growth rate.

Austin (10 companies)

No. 9 Investment Watches, 15,741 percent
No. 72 Razor Metrics, 3,856 percent
No. 91 Autonomize AI, 2,921 percent
No. 102 Choose Your Horizon, 2,719 percent
No. 132 Wander Staffing, 2,296 percent
No. 144 Everyday Dose, 2,179 percent
No. 148 NetRise, 2,118 percent
No. 163 Nutrabound Labs, 1,999 percent (Bastrop)
No. 179 Steadily, 1,890 percent
No. 208 Tiny Health, 1,624 percent

Dallas-Fort Worth (11 companies)

No. 3 Yantran, 258,740 percent (Allen)
No. 12 Paek Management Group, 12,520 percent (Irving)
No. 82 Elite Robotics and Automation, 3,334 percent (Fort Worth)
No. 133 Outamation, 2,291 percent (Southlake)
No. 147 Red Creek Solutions, 2,119 percent (Frisco)
No. 155 JobTread Software, 2,071 percent (Dallas)
No. 164 DAX Eyewear, 1,977 percent (Nevada)
No. 186 Optimized Waste Removal, 1,830 percent (Fort Worth)
No. 204 Freight Flex, 1,642 percent (Denton)
No. 212 Maverick Power, 1,591 percent (McKinney)
No. 229 Innovative Life Sciences, 1,494 percent (McKinney)

San Antonio (one company)

No. 118 Hire With Near, 2,421 percent

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