Florida startup Fit:Match chose Houston for its first location of its AI-enabled retail store. Photo via shopfitmatch.com

In November, on the first floor of Friendswood's Baybrook Mall, wedged between the Abercrombie & Fitch and the Apple Store, a small studio popped up. At the window, a bubblegum assortment of balloons replaced the usual spruced-up manakin, and the shop is sparse for racks of clothing.

That's because the Fit:Match studio isn't really trying to sell clothes — it's trying to help you buy them online. By fusing artificial intelligence with retail shopping, Fit:Match makes ordering clothes online more trustworthy. The writing on the walls promised to revolutionize the way that people could: "Shop what fits. Not what doesn't," reads a neon sign. The tech might not only reduce long waits for the dressing room — it could abolish it altogether.

"You never have to try on clothes again," says Haniff Brown, founder of the Florida-native startup.

The store does have a fitting room, but Brown says it's not really for trying on clothes — it's for preparing to "get fitched," the process through which the imaging tech measures a customer's body.

It's fitting that the pop-up sits next to the iPhone giant. Fit:Match uses the same 3D imaging tech as Apple's FaceID, Brown says, which blasts infrared light at thousands of dots at a user's face. Where the light bounces off, the AI technology images the person's face. The sensors at the Fit:Match studio in Baybrook Mall expand this to the rest of the body. In 10 seconds, the AI sensor lets people sketches a customer's shape through 150 measurements.

Those measurements become indicators of how well a piece of clothing will fit the wearer. In the initial phase of the project, Brown's team fitched thousands of women — wanting to keep things neat, the company hasn't ventured into men's fashion yet — and compared the scores of the AI's algorithm with how the women scored their own clothes.

Now, once a customer has been fitched at the Baybrook studio, she can log online through an app or the company site and sift through thousands of clothes that will likely fit her. Each clothing item — mostly smaller brands that range from eclectic pieces and dresses to athleisure right now, Brown says, although he's already working to partner with better-known labels — is rated with a percentage of how well it's likely to fit the individual customer, based on her measurements and on how snug or loose she likes her wear. From the array of brands, she'll get specific matches — clothes that have a 90 percent chance or higher of fitting — that might look completely different from a friend's. Over time, the app will also update her on the latest matches.

"You're going to have this personalized wallet," Brown says, adding that this will also decrease a store's rate of return. "You will see a completely truncated assortment of clothes that are meant to fit you."

The Baybrook Mall hosts Fit:Match's first location. Brown says he chose the Houston area for its size and demographics, calling it a "hotbed to test new ideas, to get traction, to get customer feedback," and is even considering expanding to the Woodlands Mall and other places around Texas, too. It's also not far from the Austin-based Capital Factory, which brought Fit:Match under its wing late last year to help the startup raise $5 million.

In the meantime, the five-member management team at Fit:Match is focused on getting more Houstonians fitched. In the first month of operations, the studio measured more than 1,200 mallgoers, and Brown says the company could fitch a quarter million in the next two or three years.

"We think that the opportunity here is immense," Brown says.

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Houston space tech startups share latest updates on lunar missions and more

space update

Houston-based space tech companies Axiom Space and Intuitive Machines recently shared updates on innovative projects and missions, each set to launch by 2027.

Axiom Space

Axiom Space, developer of the world’s first commercial space station and other space infrastructure, is gearing up to launch two orbital data center nodes to low-earth orbit by the end of 2025.

The Axiom Space nodes will lay the foundation for space-based cloud computing. Axiom says orbital data centers provide cloud-enabled data storage and processing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning directly to satellites, constellations, and other spacecraft in Earth’s orbit. This innovation will reduce reliance on earth-based systems, enhance wireless mesh networks and improve real-time operation of space-borne assets, according to Axiom.

Axiom has been working on the development of orbital data centers since 2022. The two nodes going into space in 2025 will be part of Kepler Communications’ 10-satellite data relay network, which is scheduled to launch by the end of this year. Axiom Space and Kepler Communications have been collaborating since 2023.

Kam Ghaffarian, co-founder, executive chairman, and CEO of Axiom, says his company already has deals in place with buyers of space-based cloud computing services. Orbital data centers “are integral to Axiom Space’s vision of era-defining space infrastructure, unlocking transformational capabilities and economic growth,” he says.

Axiom Space says it will be able to buy additional payloads on Kepler’s network to boost capacity for orbital data centers. The two companies will team up to provide network and orbital data center services to various customers.

Intuitive Machines

Meanwhile, Intuitive Machines, a space exploration, infrastructure and services company, has picked SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to launch its fourth delivery mission to the moon. The launch will include two lunar data relay satellites for NASA.

Intuitive Machines says its fourth lunar delivery mission is scheduled for 2027. The mission will comprise six NASA commercial lunar payloads, including a European Space Agency drill set designed to search for water at the moon’s south pole.

“Lunar surface delivery and data relay satellites are central to our strategy to commercialize the moon,” Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus says.

The first of five lunar data relay satellites will be included in the company’s third delivery mission to the moon. The fourth mission, featuring two more satellites, will be followed by two other satellite-delivery missions.

Houston doctor aims to revolutionize hearing aid industry with tiny implant

small but mighty

“What is the future of hearing aids?” That’s the question that led to a potential revolution.

“The current hearing aid market and technology is old, and there are little incremental improvements, but really no significant, radical new ideas, and I like to challenge the status quo,” says Dr. Ron Moses, an ENT specialist and surgeon at Houston Methodist.

Moses is the creator of NanoEar, which he calls “the world’s smallest hearing aid.” NanoEar is an implantable device that combines the invisibility of a micro-sized tympanostomy tube with more power—and a superior hearing experience—than the best behind-the-ear hearing aid.

“You put the NanoEar inside of the eardrum in an in-office procedure that takes literally five minutes,” Moses says.

As Moses explains, because of how the human cochlea is formed, its nerves break down over time. It’s simply an inevitability that if we live long enough, we will need hearing aids.

“The question is, ‘Are we going to all be satisfied with what exists?’” he asks.

Moses says that currently, only about 20 percent of patients who need hearing aids have them. That’s because of the combination of the stigma, the expense, and the hassle and discomfort associated with the hearing aids currently available on the market. That leaves 80 percent untapped among a population of 466 million people with hearing impairment, and more to come as our population ages. In a nearly $7 billion global market, that additional 80 percent could mean big money.

Moses initially patented a version of the invention in 2000, but says that it took finding the right team to incorporate as NanoEar. That took place in 2016, when he joined forces with cofounders Michael Moore and Willem Vermaat, now the company’s president and CFO, respectively. Moore is a mechanical engineer, while Vermaat is a “financial guru;” both are repeat entrepreneurs in the biotech space.

Today, NanoEar has nine active patents. The company’s technical advisors include “the genius behind developing the brains in this device,” Chris Salthouse; NASA battery engineer Will West; Dutch physicist and audiologist Joris Dirckx; and Daniel Spitz, a third-generation master watchmaker and the original guitarist for the famed metal band Anthrax.

The NanoEar concept has done proof-of-concept testing on both cadavers at the University of Antwerp and on chinchillas, which are excellent models for human hearing, at Tulane University. As part of the TMC Innovation Institute program in 2017, the NanoEar team met with FDA advisors, who told them that they might be eligible for an expedited pathway to approval.

Thus far, NanoEar has raised about $900,000 to get its nine patents and perform its proof-of-concept experiments. The next step is to build the prototype, but completing it will take $2.75 million of seed funding.

Despite the potential for making global change, Moses has said it’s been challenging to raise funds for his innovation.

“We're hoping to find that group of people or person who may want to hear their children or grandchildren better. They may want to join with others and bring a team of investors to offset that risk, to move this forward, because we already have a world-class team ready to go,” he says.

To that end, NanoEar has partnered with Austin-based Capital Factory to help with their raise. “I have reached out to their entire network and am getting a lot of interest, a lot of interest,” says Moses. “But in the end, of course, we need the money.”

It will likely, quite literally, be a sound investment in the future of how we all hear the next generation.