Houston-based Hamper, which makes dry cleaning convenient, won the Rockets and BBVA Compass' LaunchPad competition. Courtesy of Hamper

Safir Ali and his brother, Mubeen, thought they had a better way to improve and modernize the dry cleaning user experience, and, lucky for them, the judges behind the 2019 LaunchPad Contest agreed.

The contest, sponsored by the Houston Rockets and BBVA Compass, will reward Hamper with a $10,000 prize, along with a consultation with Rockets and BBVA Compass executives and a host of other prizes. But winning the startup competition, which seeks to recognize Houston-area entrepreneurs using technology to advance their businesses, has been icing on the cake for Hamper's successes.

The brothers grew up in their parents' dry cleaning store. After school and over summer vacations, the boys would work in the shop, which their father founded shortly after emigrating to the U.S. in 1989.

"I had this 'aha' moment in 2016," Safir says. "I had graduated from Texas A&M in 2014 and was working a corporate job and the last thing on my mind was joining the family business. But I started to see all the pain points for people in dry cleaning."

The biggest, he observed, was the inconvenience of it all. He'd notice people rushing to collect their shirts and suits in the after-work hours between 5 and 7 p.m., harried looks on their faces in the sprint to get there in time, relief that they'd made it before the doors closed at 7.

"'I'm so glad you're still open!' they'd tell us," he says. "And I thought, there really has to be a better way."

That better way, he and Mubeen are betting, is Hamper. Safir describes it as "the Red Box of dry cleaning." Customers can deposit their dry cleaning in a kiosk in their office building, and it will be delivered straight to their suite. Originally, Safir thought the kiosks could be stand-alones, but it proved to be easier to partner with high-traffic office spaces, like those in the busy Galleria or over in Williams Tower.

Hamper's concept is two-pronged, but simple. Before the company even built a drop-off kiosk, they created an app that would allow people to schedule when a driver could come and collect their dry cleaning. Using technology similar to the kinds of location software Uber uses, Hamper users could create an account, tick off what items they needed laundered or dry cleaned, then select both a pick up and a drop off time. A Hamper driver would come and collect the items, and then return with them fully pressed and cleaned.

The app launched in 2017, but it was never the end game.

"The kiosk prototype took us a year and a half to build out," says Safir, who enlisted the help of some friends who'd studied mechanical and electrical engineering to do it. Last summer, Hamper started a pilot program for the kiosks, setting them up in three Class-A office buildings.

"The idea is that the buildings and offices can offer dry cleaning as another amenity," says Safir.

For customers, using a Hamper kiosk is easy. The first time they visit the kiosk, they input their mobile phone number, then create an account with their name and office suite. They then scan the special Hamper bag they've picked up either from a promotional visit by Hamper or from the kiosk itself. Each bag has a unique QR code that becomes attached to the customer record. Once the bag is scanned, customers receive a text message to connect with Hamper and complete their order, listing the items they've put into the bag and inputting payment information. They then seal the bag and drop it into the kiosk. Hamper drivers collect all of the bags, and bring them to the Ali family's dry cleaning shop, where they are laundered. Once they're ready, the items are brought back to the offices. Customers keep the dry cleaning bags for their next order.

"We strive for excellence, both in terms of price and quality of service," says Safir, who's a member at Station Houston. "When the garments come in and when they go out, we have a seven-point inspection system. If a seam's come loose or a button has been broken somewhere along the way, we fix that."

Being able to combine the quality of a family business with 21st century technology has been exciting for Safir. The kiosk software was built in Angular, and is now hosted on React JS. Hamper's revamped website is about to make the transition to React JS, having formerly existed on Angular.

"The cool thing for us is that we're gearing up to build software for our dry cleaning facility – we call it the plant," says Safir. "We want to revamp the traditional experience where each garment is given an individual ticket and someone staples that onto the garment and pushes it through the system."

He envisions a system where a permanent barcode will be imprinted on a particular garment's care tag, so that whenever that garment comes back to Hamper, all the information about its cleaning will be there: does the customer like light starch, does it need some sort of additional care.

"If we can automate that intake process, we can be more efficient," says Safir. "At some point, I'd love to look at using AI to do things like spot stains or other damages before we wash the garments."

Safir knows he's disrupting the family business, and he readily admits that his father looked at him and his brother like they were crazy when they first broached the idea. But he came to appreciate the brothers' worth ethic, which Safir says they inherited from their mom and dad,and the idea that his sons were making a dream of his come true.

"For as long as I can remember, my dad talked about wanting a warehouse space in addition to a retail store," says Safir. "And thanks to the business we've brought in, we're working to make that a reality. We'll probably move in in September."

Once they do, Safir knows, two generations of dry cleaners will co-exist, using the tools of their centuries to continue their business.

In addition to the prize money from the Rockets Launchpad Contest, Hamper will also be recognized in a joint press release announcing the company's win, as well as getting some love at halftime at an upcoming Rockets game and having the win posted on social media.

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Texas Republicans are pushing to move NASA headquarters to Houston

space city

Two federal lawmakers from Texas are spearheading a campaign to relocate NASA’s headquarters from Washington, D.C., to the Johnson Space Center in Houston’s Clear Lake area. Houston faces competition on this front, though, as lawmakers from two other states are also vying for this NASA prize.

With NASA’s headquarters lease in D.C. set to end in 2028, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, and U.S. Rep. Brian Babin, a Republican whose congressional district includes the Johnson Space Center, recently wrote a letter to President Trump touting the Houston area as a prime location for NASA’s headquarters.

“A central location among NASA’s centers and the geographical center of the United States, Houston offers the ideal location for NASA to return to its core mission of space exploration and to do so at a substantially lower operating cost than in Washington, D.C.,” the letter states.

Cruz is chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; and Babin is chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Both committees deal with NASA matters. Twenty-five other federal lawmakers from Texas, all Republicans, signed the letter.

In the letter, legislators maintain that shifting NASA’s headquarters to the Houston area makes sense because “a seismic disconnect between NASA’s headquarters and its missions has opened the door to bureaucratic micromanagement and an erosion of [NASA] centers’ interdependence.”

Founded in 1961, the $1.5 billion, 1,620-acre Johnson Space Center hosts NASA’s mission control and astronaut training operations. More than 12,000 employees work at the 100-building complex.

According to the state comptroller, the center generates an annual economic impact of $4.7 billion for Texas, and directly and indirectly supports more than 52,000 public and private jobs.

In pitching the Johnson Space Center for NASA’s HQ, the letter points out that Texas is home to more than 2,000 aerospace, aviation, and defense-related companies. Among them are Elon Musk’s SpaceX, based in the newly established South Texas town of Starbase; Axiom Space and Intuitive Machines, both based in Houston; and Firefly Aerospace, based in the Austin suburb of Cedar Park.

The letter also notes the recent creation of the Texas Space Commission, which promotes innovation in the space and commercial aerospace sectors.

Furthermore, the letter cites Houston-area assets for NASA such as:

  • A strong business environment.
  • A low level of state government regulation.
  • A cost of living that’s half of what it is in the D.C. area.

“Moving the NASA headquarters to Texas will create more jobs, save taxpayer dollars, and reinvigorate America’s space agency,” the letter says.

Last November, NASA said it was hunting for about 375,000 to 525,000 square feet of office space in the D.C. area to house the agency’s headquarters workforce. About 2,500 people work at the agency’s main offices. NASA’s announcement set off a scramble among three states to lure the agency’s headquarters.

Aside from officials in Texas, politicians in Florida and Ohio are pressing NASA to move its headquarters to their states. Florida and Ohio both host major NASA facilities.

NASA might take a different approach, however. “NASA is weighing closing its headquarters and scattering responsibilities among the states, a move that has the potential to dilute its coordination and influence in Washington,” Politico reported in March.

Meanwhile, Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat who represents D.C., introduced legislation in March that would prohibit relocating a federal agency’s headquarters (including NASA’s) away from the D.C. area without permission from Congress.

“Moving federal agencies is not about saving taxpayer money and will degrade the vital services provided to all Americans across the country,” Norton said in a news release. “In the 1990s, the Bureau of Land Management moved its wildfire staff out West, only to move them back when Congress demanded briefings on new wildfires.”

Houston research breakthrough could pave way for next-gen superconductors

Quantum Breakthrough

A study from researchers at Rice University, published in Nature Communications, could lead to future advances in superconductors with the potential to transform energy use.

The study revealed that electrons in strange metals, which exhibit unusual resistance to electricity and behave strangely at low temperatures, become more entangled at a specific tipping point, shedding new light on these materials.

A team led by Rice’s Qimiao Si, the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics and Astronomy, used quantum Fisher information (QFI), a concept from quantum metrology, to measure how electron interactions evolve under extreme conditions. The research team also included Rice’s Yuan Fang, Yiming Wang, Mounica Mahankali and Lei Chen along with Haoyu Hu of the Donostia International Physics Center and Silke Paschen of the Vienna University of Technology. Their work showed that the quantum phenomenon of electron entanglement peaks at a quantum critical point, which is the transition between two states of matter.

“Our findings reveal that strange metals exhibit a unique entanglement pattern, which offers a new lens to understand their exotic behavior,” Si said in a news release. “By leveraging quantum information theory, we are uncovering deep quantum correlations that were previously inaccessible.”

The researchers examined a theoretical framework known as the Kondo lattice, which explains how magnetic moments interact with surrounding electrons. At a critical transition point, these interactions intensify to the extent that the quasiparticles—key to understanding electrical behavior—disappear. Using QFI, the team traced this loss of quasiparticles to the growing entanglement of electron spins, which peaks precisely at the quantum critical point.

In terms of future use, the materials share a close connection with high-temperature superconductors, which have the potential to transmit electricity without energy loss, according to the researchers. By unblocking their properties, researchers believe this could revolutionize power grids and make energy transmission more efficient.

The team also found that quantum information tools can be applied to other “exotic materials” and quantum technologies.

“By integrating quantum information science with condensed matter physics, we are pivoting in a new direction in materials research,” Si said in the release.

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

Houston humanoid robotics startup inks new deal to deploy its rugged robots

big deal

Houston-based Persona AI announced the expansion of its operations at the Ion and a major milestone in deploying its humanoid robots.

The company will establish a state-of-the-art development center in the prominent corner suite on the first floor of the Ion, and is slated to begin expansion in June.

“We chose the Ion because it’s more than just a building — it’s a thriving innovation ecosystem,” CEO Nicolaus Radford said in a news release. “This is where Houston’s tech future is being built. It’s a convergence point for the people, energy, and ideas that power our mission to redefine human-machine collaboration. For an industrial, AI-driven robotics company, there’s no better place to scale than in the heart of Houston.”

Persona AI’s new development center will be located in the suite utilized by the Ion Prototyping Lab, managed by TXRX Labs. The IPL will transition its operations to the expanded TXRX facility in the East End Maker Hub, which will allow the lab to grow its team and meet increased demand.

At the start of the year, Persona AI closed $25 million in pre-seed funding. Earlier this month, the company announced a memorandum of understanding with HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering, HD Hyundai Robotic, and Korean manufacturing firm Vazil Company to create and deploy humanoid robots for complex welding tasks in shipyards.

The project will deliver prototype humanoids by the end of 2026, with field testing and full commercial deployment scheduled to begin in 2027.

"As heavy industry faces growing labor constraints—especially in high-risk trades like welding—the need for rugged, autonomous humanoid robots is more urgent than ever,” Radford added in a separate statement. “This partnership with HD Hyundai and Vazil is more than symbolic—deploying to the shipyard is one of the largest real-world proving grounds for Persona's tough, humanoid robots.”