Houston startup creates the Alexa or Siri for oil and gas companies

Hey, Nesh?

Nesh's digital assistant technology wants to make industry information more easily accessible for energy professionals. Photo courtesy of Thomas Miller/Breitling Energy

When Sidd Gupta's friend lost his job and struggled to find a new position after the major oil downturn in 2014, Gupta noticed a systemic problem within the industry.

"A company rejected him because he was unfamiliar with the software they used in their operations," Gupta explains. "In our industry, companies will judge a potential hire's technical capabilities based on which software they know how to use rather than how good they would be at the job."

While software requirements for oilfield jobs are common, it made Gupta consider how we can make complex data and knowledge more accessible.

Gupta saw something else brewing in the energy industry that also piqued his interest.

"There was entrepreneurship in the oil and gas space and an interest in data science during the oil downturn. We saw startups created in Austin then Houston. There was an infectious entrepreneurial energy at that time," he says.

Last year, he took the entrepreneurial leap, quit his job and founded Nesh, a smart assistant like Alexa or Siri, but specifically for oil and gas companies. Nesh sources information from public data, vendor sources, technical papers, journal articles, news feeds and more to give answers to complex, technical questions related to energy.

Nesh explained
Because this tool is meant for businesses and not personal use, the software must be trustworthy, Gupta says, and he asked himself what he needs to do to make an engineer or a CEO of an energy company believe Nesh's response.

The answer: transparency. With Nesh, users can see how the smart assistant came to its answer. The software shows the data and workflow behind the answer as part of the user interface.

And Nesh learns from its users too. If an unfamiliar question is posed to Nesh, users can add new training phrases to teach Nesh what to do next time the question is posed.

"We created Nesh as something super-simple to use," Gupta says. "There's no learning curve, no technical knowledge required, you just need to speak plain English."

Gupta, who was raised in India, came to the United States to pursue his master's degree in petroleum engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. After working in oil and gas for over a decade, he started Nesh last year with co-founder and CTO Seth Anderson.

Gearing up for the future
This year, Nesh is in the process of fundraising, and, with the new funds, he plans to expand his workforce, which is currently five employees (including Gupta himself) based in Houston. Due to its size, Nesh currently can run only one pilot program at a time. With more employees, Nesh will be able to scale up its pilot programs and run multiple pilots in parallel. The larger user pool for these pilots will give Gupta and his team better insights into Nesh and allow them to continue refining the tool.

Right now, Gupta wants to commercialize in those operations where Nesh is already running pilot programs. He says he hopes for Nesh to have both internal and external growth, with the next surge of hiring and an expanded user pool for the product.

He plans to make Nesh available as a commercial product in fall of this year with a target market of small to mid-sized oil and gas companies.

Gupta says Nesh is different from anything in the market.

"With enterprise software in general, it can be very hard to get a demo version of software without talking to a sales representative—something that people dislike," he says. "I want to bring the B2C aspect of trying a software to the B2B world."

The business model goal for Nesh is for potential clients to be able to test the software themselves, Gupta says, and then contact the company if they're interested.

"I want transparent pricing to be visible on our website," he says. "I want potential customers to be able to experience the demo just by giving their information."

As Gupta sees it, one of the main advantages to being in Houston is the important support networks as well as the potential customer base. He's grateful to local organizations such as Station Houston and Capital Factory for connecting him with many resources.

"I'm seeing a lot of innovation here in Houston," Gupta says. "There's a lot of oil and gas companies, so as we begin looking for potential customers, that's a very important advantage of being here."

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Houston named the No.1 emerging city for biopharma in inaugural report

Biopharma Leader

Houston is ranked No.1 on the first-ever Next 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters report published by Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN).

The report, which ranks the best emerging hubs for life science activities, considered patents, NIH funding, lab space, venture capital investments, and the number of jobs in regions in cities, states and “clusters” across the U.S. GEN touts Houston as the top city for the biopharma industry due to a surge in funding, job creation, medical innovations and startup success.

Here’s how Houston ranked in the report’s different categories;

  • No. 1 for NIH funding with 2,262 awards totaling more than $1.25 billion
  • No. 2 for emerging regions for jobs, with 28,000 jobs
  • No. 2 for lab space, with roughly 8 million square feet in the market
  • No. 6 for patents, with 2,760 patent families

According to BioHouston chairman Jeff Wade, Houston secured half a billion dollars in venture capital funding in 2025 and 2026 to date.

The report called out major biopharm news out of Houston in the last few months, including Bristol Myers Squibb selecting Houston for its $1 billion, 600,000-square-foot manufacturing site and Eli Lily selecting Houston for its $6.5 billion, 236-acre manufacturing site. Both facilities will be located within Generation Park, a 4,300-acre, master-planned commercial district near Lake Houston.

Houston startups like CrossBridge Bio and Duracyte were also mentioned in the report. CrossBridge, which develops antibody-drug conjugates for cancer, was acquired by Eli Lily in April for $300 million. Duracyte, a “living pharmacy” company, was launched out of Rice University’s biotech venture studio RBL LLC this spring and is backed by up to a $45 million Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) award.

The startup is working to commercialize its Hybrid Advanced Molecular Manufacturing Regulator (HAMMR) technology, a rechargeable, implantable device that can sense biological signals, monitor tumor environments and adjust therapeutic output in real time.

“There’s a lot of great talent, but the unique advantage that we have is we are able to benefit from a lot of unique clinical infrastructure and clinician insights,” Omid Veiseh, Duracyte co-founder and managing partner of RBL LLC, told GEN. “There are a lot of clinicians here who are eager to partner on investigator-initiated trials.”

The report also touted Houston’s Texas Medical Center, home to the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Baylor College of Medicine, and international partnerships like the recently expanded TMC Korea BioBridge.

Other cities to make the list include:

  • No. 2 Minneapolis-St. Paul
  • No. 3 Denver-Boulder
  • No. 4 St. Louis
  • No. 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

States to make the list include:

  • No. 1 Ohio (including Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus)
  • No. 2 Indiana (including Indianapolis)
  • No. 3 Florida (including Jacksonville and Miami-Fort Lauderdale)
  • No. 4 Georgia (including Atlanta and Augusta)
  • No. 5 Wisconsin (including Madison and Kenosha)

Regional state clusters to watch include:

  • Phoenix
  • Pittsburgh
  • Greater Richmond, Virginia
  • South Carolina
  • Utah

See the full report here.

Major Texas-based airlines ground humanoid robots as passengers

In The Air

Two major airlines based in Texas are drawing a hard line between human and humanoid: American Airlines and Southwest Airlines won’t permit human-like or animal-like robots to board flights as passengers.

Fort Worth-based American and Dallas-based Southwest recently adopted bans on robotic passengers after two incidents in which human-like robots joined flesh-and-blood passengers on Southwest flights.

In May, Aaron Mehdizadeh, owner of The Robot Studio rental company in Dallas, was heading from Las Vegas to Dallas Love Field with 3.5-foot-tall Stewie, according to CBS News Texas. Rather than shipping Stewie as cargo, Mehdizadeh bought the robot its own seat using a type of ticket often purchased for fragile items such as wedding dresses and equipment.

But because Stewie was technically a carry-on item, the robot wasn’t supposed to occupy a seat, according to eWeek. Crew members wound up disconnecting Stewie’s battery and relocating the robot to a window seat before takeoff.

Mehdizadeh pushed back on Southwest’s stance regarding the battery, telling CBS News Texas that Stewie’s power supply is a standard battery that’s similar to one for a laptop.

Stewie isn’t the only robot making mischief in the skies. In May, a 70-pound, human-like robot named Bebop caused a stir on a Southwest flight from Oakland, California, to San Diego.

The robot prompted a nearly one-hour flight delay after crew members realized it violated restrictions on large carry-ons and raised concerns about the battery, San Francisco TV station KGO reported. Dallas-based Elite Event Robotics owns Bebop.

Southwest seized Bebop’s lithium-ion battery, but the airline did let Bebop take the San Diego-bound flight.

Southwest’s new robot policy prohibits human-like or animal-like robots from riding in an airplane cabin or as checked baggage, no matter their size or purpose. All other robots, including toys, must fit in a carry-on size bag and comply with battery restrictions, the airline says.

In a statement sent to CultureMap, a Southwest spokeswoman says the airline “has taken a strong stance on this issue and has led the U.S. airline industry with our battery policy.”

“The robot policy is a further evolution of a [safety] journey we have been on for several months. This move was not in response to any single incident,” the spokeswoman adds. “To eliminate confusion, the policy applies to all similar devices, regardless of size.”

Lithium-ion batteries can overheat, catch on fire, or explode on airplanes.

American’s new robot policy, which took effect Monday, August 17, is similar to Southwest’s. The policy prohibits human-like and animal-like robots from sitting in a purchased seat, being stored in an overhead bin or traveling as checked baggage. The ban applies to U.S., international, and regional flights.

“While there have been no known events involving this type of robot on any American flight, this policy was developed following a comprehensive review of safety risks associated with these devices, including the large lithium-ion batteries that power them,” the airline said in an internal memo obtained by the View From the Wing travel blog.

American gate agents have been told not to allow a passenger accompanied by a robot to board a plane or to let a robot travel as a checked item, the memo say.

If a robot is discovered after check-in, American employees are supposed to follow the Federal Aviation Administration’s “undeclared dangerous goods” procedures. These procedures cover hazardous shipments like lithium-ion batteries, explosives, flammable liquids, and compressed gases that lack required warning labels or shipping documents.

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Texas A&M, UH rise in global rankings of universities attracting the most attention

visibility report

Houston and Texas universities had a strong showing on the 2026-27 Global University Visibility (GUV) Rankings compiled by D.C.-based higher ed market research firm American Caldwell.

Texas A&M ranked No. 6 on the list—the top rank of any Texas university. Meanwhile, the University of Houston ranked No. 52, a 15-spot jump from its previous ranking.

The GUV rankings rate colleges that garner the most global attention via news coverage, social media influence, website traffic, YouTube views, and general public interest. GUV evaluated over 1,200 universities across 193 United Nations-recognized countries.

Texas A&M, with its No. 6 global ranking, also claimed the No. 5 spot among U.S. institutions. The university climbed 21 spots from its previous rank.

“News mentions were a driver of Texas A&M’s movement in this year’s rankings, and earned media remains one of the strongest signals of relevance,” Tim Doty, associate vice president for earned media at Texas A&M, said in a news release. “Much of that visibility begins with our faculty and research experts, whose work helps explain, solve and give context to issues people care about. When Texas A&M experts appear in news stories about research, discovery, national security, agriculture, health, engineering, service and the future of Texas, audiences see the university not only as large or well known, but as useful, relevant and necessary to the conversations shaping our state and country.”

In the “Public Interest” category, UH also claimed a top 10 global ranking at No.6. UH touts its overall GUV rankings success to Guggenheim Fellowships, MacArthur “Genius” grants, National Academy membership, studies like researchers breaking the superconductivity temperature record, and success on the football field and basketball courts.

“Across the board, there is no question that the University of Houston is a brand on the rise,” Shawn Lindsey, interim vice president for marketing and communications, said in a news release. “People are seeing our story, hearing about the amazing things happening at UH and actively seeking us out to learn more. We are seeing it in record-high student applications, we are seeing increases in trademark licensing revenue, our faculty are earning global accolades. It’s an exciting time to be a Houston Cougar.”

Other Texas institutions to make the top 250 on the list include:

  • No. 22 The University of Texas at Austin
  • No. 104 University of Texas at Dallas
  • No. 159 Texas Tech University
  • No. 178 Rice University
  • No. 191 University of North Texas
  • No. 248 Texas State University

For the fourth year in a row, Harvard University secured the top spot on the list, followed by MIT, Stanford University and Purdue University. The University of Oxford was the top non-U.S. institution at No. 5.

See the full list here.

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