Houston clean energy lab names 4 new companies to program

new to the labs

Halliburton Labs has named its newest cohort — and opened applications for the next one. Photo courtesy of Halliburton

Halliburton Labs has doubled the number of clean energy companies that are operating out of its facilities with the addition of its second cohort.

Four companies have been selected for the program, joining four existing member companies of Halliburton Labs, which originally launched last summer. The companies recently announced to the incubator are Alumina Energy, Ionada, Parasanti, and SurgePower Materials.

"We are excited to support and collaborate with this group of early-stage, clean energy companies as they continue their commercialization journey," says Dale Winger, managing director of Halliburton Labs, in a news release. "Each has demonstrated a commitment to accelerating their technologies, and we are eager to help them innovate, develop and scale each company."

The new companies join existing labs members Nanotech Inc, Enexor BioEnergy, Momentum Technologies, and OCO Inc. Nanotech was the first company to join the labs in August 2020, while the other three were added in February.

With the announcement of the new cohort, Halliburton is now accepting applications for its third cohort. Interested companies can apply via the website, and submissions are due by September 3, 2021.

Alumina Energy

Focusing on providing zero-carbon heat and power solutions, Santa Monica, California-based Alumina Energy has created a patented packed bed thermal energy storage technology that can make renewable energy resources a more reliable and cost competitive source of heat and power.

"We are very excited to join Halliburton Labs' cleantech accelerator program and collaborate with their experienced team to advance cleaner, affordable energy," says Sasha Braun Diamont, founder and CEO of Alumina Energy, in the release.

Ionada

Ionada is based in Ontario, Canada, and also has offices in London and Germany. The company has developed an exhaust gas cleaning systems that's designed to reduce emissions from the marine and power generation industries.

"We are receiving tremendous interest from industrial emitters around the world for modular carbon capture systems. Halliburton Labs' engineering, supply chain expertise and global network provide the ideal launching platform for us to scale our business to meet demand," says Edoardo Panziera, CEO of Ionada, in the release.

Parasanti

Headquartered in Austin, Parasanti is a tech company with software and hardware applications geared toward streaming analytics and production machine learning to enhance data analytics,

"Parasanti could not be more honored to be a part of the Halliburton Labs accelerator. With the domain expertise and wealth of knowledge that Haliburton Labs possesses, this accelerator will position Parasanti to leverage our edge hardware and software technologies to enable new artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions in the energy space," says Parasanti co-founders James Hancock and Joshua Seagroves in the release.

SurgePower Materials

San Marcos-based SurgePower Materials has developed a way to produce high-purity graphene from an abundant renewable raw material — a process that will allow for producing concrete, electronics, renewable energy, and batteries in a more sustainable way.

"Our goal is to make SurgePower Materials the key enabler of the forthcoming graphene age with plant-based graphene as an essential component of many new technologies. Our strategic collaboration with Halliburton Labs allows us to leverage their world-class engineering expertise to rapidly scale our production and accelerate the adoption of new graphene-based solutions," says Dr. Michael Opoku, CEO of SurgePower Materials, in the release.

Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Property Showcase

23 Houston companies rank among America’s most future-ready businesses

future focused

By one measure, Spring-based tech giant Hewlett Packard Enterprises reigns as the most future-ready Houston-area company on the S&P 500 stock index.

HPE sits at No. 72 in a first-time ranking of the best S&P 500 companies for the future. Including HPE, 23 Houston-area companies appear on the list.

Published by The Wall Street Journal, the ranking was created by Bendable Labs for the WSJ Leadership Institute. It evaluates how S&P 500 companies stack up in six areas: AI readiness, innovation, talent readiness, financial fitness, resilience and agility. To be ranked, a company had to be part of the S&P 500 as of Dec. 31.

Among the six categories, HPE ranked highest for innovation (No. 30) among local companies. The WSJ didn’t say why HPE scored so well for innovation. However, the company stands out in this category thanks to:

  • Creation of the El Capitan and Frontier supercomputing systems
  • Research into photonic computing and quantum networking
  • Last year’s $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks, giving HPE an edge in AI-native networking
  • Establishment of the everything-as-a-service GreenLake hybrid cloud platform for data centers, colocation facilities and edge computing environments

In an interview with the Six Five podcast at HPE Discover 2025 in Las Vegas, CEO Antonio Neri said the company’s strategy is “basically founded on innovation, and that innovation drives shareholder value over the long term.”

While HPE fared well in the innovation category, it ranked toward the bottom for financial fitness. What’s behind the No. 430 ranking in the financial category? HPE’s low score likely reflects a debt-heavy acquisition strategy coupled with a historically low-margin hardware business.

Here’s the full list of the 23 Houston-area companies included in the ranking of the best companies for the future:

  • No. 72 Hewlett Packard Enterprise
  • No. 105 SLB
  • No. 120 Baker Hughes
  • No. 125 ConocoPhillips
  • No. 158 NRG Energy
  • No. 176 Targa Resources
  • No. 185 Chevron
  • No. 195 Halliburton
  • No. 223 Coterra Energy
  • No. 229 Waste Management
  • No. 235 Exxon Mobil
  • No. 250 Kinder Morgan
  • No. 257 Quanta Services
  • No. 276 CenterPoint Energy
  • No. 285 Sysco
  • No. 313 Occidental Petroleum
  • No. 318 Camden Property Trust
  • No. 333 EOG Resources
  • No. 365 LyondellBasell Industries
  • No. 373 Comfort Systems USA
  • No. 401 Crown Castle
  • No. 408 Phillips 66
  • No. 500 APA

Uber, Nuro and Lucid plan to roll out robotaxi services in Houston

autonomous autos

More autonomous vehicles are expected to hit the roads in Houston next year.

Ridesharing giant Uber announced that it plans to roll out its premium robotaxi service in the Bayou City in mid-2027. Houston will be Uber’s second planned market for the program, following the San Francisco Bay Area, where the program is expected to be rolled out later this year.

Uber, Nuro and Lucid Group will bring the robotaxi program to Houston with more markets planned for the future. Currently, Nuro is conducting autonomous on-road testing with safety operators in Houston. Testing includes simulation, closed-course testing and supervised public-road testing.

“Houston is a city Nuro knows well, and we’re excited to help bring this robotaxi service to the city through our partnership with Uber and Lucid,” Andrew Chapin, chief operating officer at Nuro, said in a news release. “Houston’s large, complex metro area is an ideal market for demonstrating how Nuro’s universal autonomy platform can generalize across different geographies and operating environments. We look forward to continued engagement with the community as we prepare to launch service in 2027.”

The fleet of 100 vehicles across California and Texas will feature Lucid Gravity EVs and future Lucid Midsize vehicles equipped with Nuro Driver technology, Nuro’s Level 4 universal autonomy platform, plus a redundant sensor suite with cameras, lidar, radar and a roof-mounted halo.

The vehicles will be owned and operated by Uber and its fleet partners and made available to riders through the Uber network, according to the company.

In addition to the fleet of autonomous vehicles, Uber also announced that it has secured a 50,000-square-foot depot facility and dedicated charging pitstop in Houston. The facility will allow Uber and its partners to control vehicle maintenance, repairs, charging, cleaning, and day-to-day operations.

“Houston marks an important next step in our partnership with Lucid and Nuro as we expand autonomous mobility to more riders throughout the world,” Sarfraz Maredia, global head of autonomous mobility & delivery at Uber, added in the release. “Together, we’re combining best-in-class vehicle and autonomy technology with Uber’s scale, fleet operations expertise, and infrastructure capabilities to build a service that can grow across dozens of markets in the years ahead.”

Waymo launched its autonomous vehicle program in Houston in February.

The company later suspended its driverless car services in Houston, other major Texas cities, and Atlanta, after one of its vehicles was stranded by flooding during heavy rains. However, according to the Houston Chronicle, the fleet has resumed activity in Houston and is fully active.

Houston fintech company closes $7M funding round

fintech funding

Houston-based fintech company Receipts Depositary Corporation has closed a $7 million oversubscribed funding round and plans to scale.

The round was led by Austin-based LiveOak Ventures, with participation from Hivemind Capital, Onigiri Capital, OTC Markets Group, GTS, and Redbeard Ventures, according to a release from RDC.

RDC's platform issues depositary receipts (DRs) to qualified investors on digital and alternative assets, making it easier for investors to buy and trade hard-to-access and less traditional assets. Currently, the company offers DRs for cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and XRP.

RDC says the new funding will allow it to launch new DR products across a wider range of asset categories, potentially including commodities. Additionally, it plans to grow its relationships with "banks, broker-dealers, market makers, custodians and exchange partners" and add to its product, operations, technology, and commercial functions teams. The company is actively hiring, according to a press release.

“Depositary Receipts are trusted, regulated capital markets products which RDC is bringing to an entirely new universe of assets, from commodities to digital assets, that have historically been out of reach of traditional securities markets," Krishna Srinivasan, founding partner at LiveOak Ventures, said the release. “The team's depth of experience in the DR business on a global scale, combined with the broad institutional validation from co-investors, anchor customers, and strategic partners across asset classes, makes RDC uniquely positioned to define this category. We're proud to lead this round and support the company as it scales.”

RDC was founded in 2022 by three Citibank alumni: CEO Ankit Mehta, CEO Bryant Kim and COO Ishaan Narain. It began offering its first DRs for Bitcoin in 2024.

“This funding round is a strong validation of what we’re building at RDC and the growing demand for modernized Depositary Receipt infrastructure,” Mehta added in the release. “With the support of LiveOak Ventures and our investor partners, we are accelerating development across our DR platform expanding our market reach, and building the team needed to support the next generation of DR product

View All Listings