Houston energy tech startup Molecule closes series B funding round

Big Bang

Sameer Soleja is the founder and CEO of Molecule, which just closed its series B round. Photo courtesy of Molecule Software

Houston-based energy trading risk management (ETRM) software company Molecule has completed a successful series B round for an undisclosed amount, according to a July 16 release from the company.

The raise was led by Sundance Growth, a California-based software growth equity firm.

Sameer Soleja, founder and CEO of Molecule, said in the release that the funding will allow the company to "double down on product innovation, grow our team, and reach even more markets."

Molecule closed a $12 million Series A round in 2021, led by Houston-based Mercury Fund, and has since seen significant growth. The company, which was founded in 2012, has expanded its customer base across the U.S., U.K., Europe, Canada and South America, according to the release.

Additionally, it has launched two new modules of its software platform. Its Hive module, which debuted in 2022, enables clients to manage their energy portfolio and renewable credits together in one scalable platform. It also introduced Elektra, an add-on for the power market to its platform, which allows for complex power market trading.

"Four years ago, we committed to becoming the leading platform for energy trading," Soleja said in the release. "Today, our customers are managing complex power and renewable portfolios across multiple jurisdictions, all within Molecule.”

Molecule is also known for its data-as-a-lake platform, Bigbang, which enables energy ETRM and commodities trading and risk management (CTRM) customers to automatically import trade data from Molecule and then merge it with various sources to conduct queries and analysis.

“Molecule is doing something very few companies in energy tech have done: combining mission-critical depth with cloud-native, scalable technology,” Christian Stewart, Sundance Growth managing director, added in the statement.

“Sameer and his team have built a platform that’s not only powerful, but user-friendly—a rare combination in enterprise software. We’re thrilled to partner with Molecule as they continue to grow and transform the energy trading and risk management market.”

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This article originally appeared on EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

Want to work for one of the top startups in Houston? Some of the best in Houston are hiring. Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels

Looking for a job? These 2023 Houston Innovation Awards finalists are hiring

calling all applicants

More than half of this year's startup finalists in the Houston Innovation Awards are hiring — who's looking for a job at one of the best startups in Houston?

When submitting their applications for the 2023 Houston Innovation Awards, which is taking place November 8 at Silver Street Studios, every startup was asked if it's hiring. Twenty-seven of the 35 startup honorees said yes, ranging from over 20 to just one positions open at each company.

Click here to secure your tickets to see which of these growing startups win.

Here's a look at which of the top startups in Houston are seeking new team members.

Double-digit growth

When it comes to the awards finalists looking to scale their team by 10 or more new hires, five finalists are growing rapidly.

Medical practice software platform RepeatMD, fresh off a $40 million raise — which included participation from Houston-based Mercury — is reportedly growing its team. The company, which has 115 employees already, is looking for over 20 new hires.

Female-owned business Feelit Technologies, which is using nanotechnology for preventive maintenance to eliminate leaks, fires and explosions, increase safety and reduce downtime, has 50 employees, and only three of which are in Houston – for now. The company hopes to grow its team by 12 to 15 employees in Houston alone.

Square Robot, an energy industry-focused robotics company that recently grew its presence in Houston, is hiring 10 to 30 new team members. It has 24 employees already in Houston.

Solugen, an alternative chemicals business, has around 140 of its 200 employees in Houston. The company, which has raised over $600 million to date, is hiring an additional 10 to 15 new hires.

Additionally, Blue People, also a finalist in last year's awards, is hiring 25 new employees. The company was founded in 2015 in Mexico and relocated its primary operations to Houston in 2020. Blue People, which develops software innovation for its clients, has over 150 employees — 10 of whom, including C-level executives, are based in Houston. Some of the company's new hires will be based in town.

Steady growth

Four Houston startups are hiring within the six to 10 team member range — all with fairly significant employee counts already.

A finalist in last year's awards too, Venus Aerospace, a hypersonics company on track to fly reusable hypersonic flight platforms by 2024, is again growing its team. With 48 on-site employees and 23 working remotely, Venus's team will add another five to 10 employees.

Syzygy Plasmonics, a deep decarbonization company that builds chemical reactors designed to use light instead of combustion to produce valuable chemicals like hydrogen and sustainable fuels, has 112 employees in Houston and plans to hire another eight to its team.

Lastly, Fervo Energy, which recently raised $10 million, has 63 full-time employees (34 in Houston, 29 outside of Houston) and looking to hire seven more.

Seeking selectively

The following awards finalists are looking to grow their teams by just a handful or so — between one and five — of new hires:

  • ALLY Energy, helping energy companies and climate startups find, develop, and retain great talent.
  • CaseCTRL, an AI-powered surgery scheduling and coordination software for optimized procedures.
  • CellChorus, using AI to evaluate immune cell function and performance to improve the development and delivery of therapeutics.
  • FluxWorks, making frictionless gearboxes for missions in any environment.
  • Helix Earth Technologies, decarbonizing the built environment and heavy industry.
  • Hope Biosciences, a clinical stage biotechnology company focused on the development and delivery of adult stem cell based therapeutics.
  • Innovapptive, empowering the deskless workers in operations, maintenance and warehouses by unlocking the power of SAP through mobility.
  • INOVUES, re-energizing building facades through its non-invasive window retrofit innovations, making building smarter, greener, and healthier for a better and sustainable future.
  • Koda Health, , a tech-enabled care coordination service to improve serious illness care planning and drive savings for value-based care at scale.
  • Molecule, an energy/commodity trading risk management software that provides users with an efficient, reliable, responsive platform for managing trade risk.
  • Rhythm Energy, 100 percent renewable electricity service for residential customers in Texas.
  • Starling Medical, bringing the future of a proactive and predictive home-based healthcare system to patients today through passive AI powered at home urine screening.
  • Taurus Vascular, pioneering a new era of aortic aneurysm treatment by developing minimally invasive catheter solutions to drive better long-term patient outcomes.
  • Tierra Climate, decarbonizing the power grid faster by helping grid-scale batteries monetize their environmental benefits and change their operational behavior to abate more carbon.
  • UpBrainery Technologies, an innovative educational technology company that provides personalized and adaptive learning experiences to learners
  • Utility Global, a technology company converting a range of waste gases into sustainable hydrogen and syngas.
  • Voyager Portal, helping commodity shippers identify root causes of demurrage, reduce risk and streamline the entire fixture process.

This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Brianna Brazle of CultureLancer, Sameer Soleja of Molecule, and Emerson Perin of Texas Heart Institute. Photos courtesy

3 Houston innovators to know this week

hou to know

Editor's note: In this week's roundup of Houston innovators to know, I'm introducing you to three local innovators across industries — from health care to energy tech — recently making headlines in Houston innovation.

Brianna Brazle, founder of CultureLancer

Houston founder joins DivInc's newest accelerator that supports Web3 companies with a social impact. Photo courtesy

DivInc, aTexas-based accelerator focused on helping BIPOC and female founders on their entrepreneurial journeys, announced the inaugural class for its newest accelerator. DWeb for Social Impact Accelerator, a 12-week intensive hybrid program sponsored by Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web, will mentor nine companies, all of whom integrate Web3 technologies into their impact entrepreneurship.

One Houston-based startup, CultureLancer, will be participating in the program. Founded by Brianna Brazle, the career-focused platform matches students from HBCU with companies looking to hire in the fields of business development, data analysis, marketing, and operations.

“That’s a problem that has been existing and then after doing more research I learned historically about 56%, year over year, of college graduates find themselves unemployed or underemployed,” Brazle explains. “My first solution to this problem was a hybrid marketplace.” Read more.

Sameer Soleja, founder and CEO of Molecule

Sameer Soleja has expanded his company's platform. Photo courtesy of Molecule Software

Houston startup Molecule Software hopes to get a big bang out of its new platform for the energy and commodities markets. The data-as-a-lake platform, Bigbang, is available as an add-on for current Molecule customers. It enables energy trading and risk management (ETRM) and commodities trading and risk management customers to automatically import trade data from Molecule, and then merge it with various sources to conduct queries and analysis.

Molecule sells Bigbang at a monthly rate through either a yearly or multiyear contract.

“We’re seeing a growing need in the energy and commodities trading space for a turnkey data lake, as indicated by our own customers. They need real-time and automated data streaming from key systems, the ability to query the data quickly and easily, and access to the data using the analytics tools they know well,” says Sameer Soleja, founder and CEO of Molecule. Read more.

Emerson Perin, medical director of The Texas Heart Institute

Emerson Perin of the Texas Heart Institute, recently published the largest clinical trial of cell therapy for patients with chronic heart failure to-date included 580 patients at 52 sites throughout North America. Photo via texasheart.org

Emerson Perin’s end goal isn’t to treat heart failure. The medical director of The Texas Heart Institute says that he has his sights set firmly on curing the malady altogether. And, with the power of innovation and a strong team, the Houston-based cardiologist has a good chance of meeting his objective.

Perin first came to THI for fellowship training in 1988, following his residency in Miami and medical school in his birthplace of Brazil.

“This is a very special place,” the physician and researcher, whose titles also include director for THI’s Center for Clinical Research and vice president for medical affairs, tells InnovationMap. “It has a worldwide-reaching reputation. I’ve always liked research and this is a great place in terms of innovation and practicing high-level cardiology.” Read more.

The four finalists in the BIPOC-Founded Business category for the inaugural InnovationMap Awards share their best advice for their fellow founders. Photos courtesy

Overheard: 4 Houston BIPOC startup founders share their advice ahead of InnovationMap Awards

eavesdropping in Houston

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This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Sameer Soleja of Molecule, Gabriela Gerhart of The Motherhood center, and 50 Cent. Courtesy photos

3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

Editor's note: In this week's roundup of Houston innovators to know, I'm introducing you to three local innovators across industries — software, education, and more — recently making headlines in Houston innovation.

Sameer Soleja, CEO of Molecule

Sameer Soleja, CEO of Molecule, joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss his startup's recent fundraise — and how he's planning on being at the forefront of the evolving electricity commodities industry. Photo courtesy of Molecule

A 9-year-old software startup has been reinvigorated by fresh funds and a new opportunity to emerge as a leader in enterprise software for commodities — especially for electricity traders. Sameer Soleja, CEO of Molecule, joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss the company's latest funding round — a $12 million series A.

"The commodities industry is looking really hard at electricity as the growth commodity of the 2020s — renewables and conventionally generated electricity," Soleja says. "Everybody in our client base and in the market is looking at electricity. Well, we happen to have more than have of our customer base be in electricity."

Click here to listen to the podcast and read more.

Gabriela Gerhart, founder of The Motherhood Center

Houston entrepreneur recounts journey from communism to U.S. success in new book

Gabriela Gerhart recounts her journey from communism to American success in her new book. Photo courtesy of Gabriela Gerhart

Gabriela Gerhart remembers that day, back in 1989, when her teacher walked into her classroom in Czechoslovakia and announced that communism was over. Further, she told the group that everything she'd been teaching them was a lie.

Gerhart was stunned.

"It was confusing," she tells CultureMap. "You think to yourself, 'was I fooled? Was I indoctrinated? 'You have to understand, I had no idea there was another world out there."

Gerhart, founder of The Motherhood Center on West Alabama Street unpacks those feelings and others in her new autobiography, After The Fall, a story of growing up in Central Europe under communism and following her own wanderlust to the States, where she fell in love, got married, and built a successful business.

Click here to read more.

Rapper 50 Cent really means business. 50 Cent/Twitter

Rap star and Newstonian 50 Cent is giving back to area schools in need of help. The recently relocated rapper/producer/entrepreneur/rodeo wine bidder is teaming up with the Houston Independent School District and Horizon United Group to bolster entrepreneurship programs at Kashmere, Worthing, and Wheatley high schools.

He has funded the project with a $600,000 donation, Mayor Sylvester Turner announced on May 17.

Dubbed the G-Unity Business Lab, the new program will encourage students to engage in MBA-level lessons that represent the full lifecycle of a product or concept, from idea creation, to market branding, to even running a company, a press release notes.

Click here to read more.

Sameer Soleja, CEO of Molecule, joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss his startup's recent fundraise — and how he's planning on being at the forefront of the evolving electricity commodities industry. Photo courtesy of Molecule

Houston software startup to use fresh funds to become 'unquestionably the best' for the electricity industry

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 84

Sameer Soleja went to business school and came back into the workforce with a bit of a revelation about software for the commodities industry.

"I realized, 'wait a second, we've been making terrible software and selling it for tens of millions of dollars," Soleja, CEO of Molecule, says on this week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast. "We had to be able to do something better than this — technology is better than this."

Soleja founded Molecule in 2012 to address the problem. The technology isn't unfamiliar to what ardent stock traders have at their fingertips, but before these types of platforms came into the picture, commodities companies didn't have a central platform.

"The way to think about the product is if you have a brokerage account — like Robinhood, or something like that — you see how much stock you have and how much you've made or lost," Soleja says. "For companies that are trading electricity, crude oil, natural gas, and other commodities and agricultural products, they also want to see how much of each thing they have and how much they've made or lost. But they don't just get to log into their brokerage account and figure it out. That's in a lot of different places."

Lately, a couple companies have bought up some of the businesses in this sector, leaving a lot of room open up at the top. Soleja says he saw this as an opportunity and started the arduous fundraising process. Molecule closed its series A round led by Houston-based Mercury Fund this month.

The other opportunity Soleja says he saw was a new market focus on electricity — a subsector Molecule is very good at working with. About half of Molecule's clients are in this field and electricity — as opposed to oil and gas products — is full of data. Where data comes in weekly or even monthly for O&G, fresh data comes in every 15 minutes for Molecule's electrical clients.

"The commodities industry is looking really hard at electricity as the growth commodity of the 2020s — renewables and conventionally generated electricity," Soleja says. "Everybody in our client base and in the market is looking at electricity. Well, we happen to have more than have of our customer base be in electricity."

Therein lies the opportunity for Molecule, which is also interested in deploying its capital is into engineering to both meet the feature gap and exceed in places where the company is already better, Soleja explains.

"We realized, well that's the place we double down because that's where the economy is going and that's what we're good at. Let's become unquestionably the best at it," he says.

The funds will go toward company expansion. Soleja says he plans to add 50 percent to his team within the next 6 to 12 months and potentially be at 30 to 40 people in a year or two from now. Over the past nine years, Molecule has been growing organically without a centralized focus on sales and marketing.

"We are way below the benchmark for what everyone else spends on sales and marketing. So, we're going to fix that," he says.

Soleja shares more about his raise process and shares advice for his fellow startup founders on the episode. Listen to the full interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.

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7 innovative startups that are leading the energy transition in Houston

meet the finalists

Houston has long been touted as the energy capital of the world, and it's now it's also a leading player in the energy transition — home to numerous startups and innovators working toward a cleaner future.

As part of the 2025 Houston Innovation Awards, our Energy Transition Business category honors innovative startups that are providing solution within renewables, climatetech, clean energy, alternative materials, circular economy, and more.

Seven energy transition companies have been named finalists for the 2025 award. They range from a spinoff stimulating subsurface hydrogen from end-of-life oil fields to a company converting prickly pear cactus biogas into energy.

Read more about these climatetech businesses, their founders, and their green initiatives below. Then join us at the Houston Innovation Awards on Nov. 13 at Greentown Labs, when the winner will be unveiled at our live awards ceremony.

Tickets are now on sale for this exclusive event celebrating all things Houston Innovation.

Anning Corporation

Clean energy company Anning Corporation is working to develop geologic hydrogen, a natural carbon-free fuel, using its proprietary stimulation approaches and advanced exploration modeling. The company said that geologic hydrogen has the potential to be the lowest-cost source of reliable baseload electricity in the U.S.

The company was founded by CEO Sophie Broun in 2024 and is a member of Greentown Labs. Last month, it also announced that it was chosen to participate in Breakthrough Energy’s prestigious Fellows Program. Anning raised a pre-seed round this year and is currently raising a $6 million seed round.

Capwell Services

Houston-based methane capture company Capwell Services works to eliminate vented oil and gas emissions economically for operators. According to the company, methane emissions are vented from most oil and gas facilities due to safety protocols, and operators are not able to capture the gas cost-effectively, leading operators to emit more than 14 million metric tons of methane per year in the U.S. and Canada. Founded in 2022, Capwell specializes in low and intermittent flow vents for methane capture.

The company began as a University of Pennsylvania senior design project led by current CEO Andrew Lane. It has since participated in programs with Greentown Labs and Rice Clean Energy Accelerator. The company moved to Houston in 2023 and raised a pre-seed round. It has also received federal funding from the DOE. Capwell is currently piloting its commercial unit with oil and gas operators.

Deep Anchor Solutions

Offshore energy consulting and design company Deep Anchor Solutions aims to help expedite the adoption of floating offshore energy infrastructure with its deeply embedded ring anchor (DERA) technology. According to the company, its patented DERA system can be installed quietly without heavy-lift vessels, reducing anchor-related costs by up to 75 percent and lifecycle CO2 emissions by up to 80 percent.

The company was founded in 2023 by current CEO Junho Lee and CTO Charles Aubeny. Lee earned his Ph.D. in geotechnical engineering from Texas A&M University, where Aubeny is a professor of civil and environmental engineering. The company has participated in numerous accelerators and incubators, including Greentown Labs, MassChallenge, EnergyTech Nexus LiftOff, and others. Lee is an Activate 2025 fellow.

Eclipse Energy

Previously known as Gold H2, Eclipse Energy converts end-of-life oil fields into low-cost, sustainable hydrogen sources. It completed its first field trial this summer, which demonstrated subsurface bio-stimulated hydrogen production. According to the company, its technology could yield up to 250 billion kilograms of low-carbon hydrogen, which is estimated to provide enough clean power to Los Angeles for over 50 years and avoid roughly 1 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent.

Eclipse is a spinoff of Houston biotech company Cemvita. It was founded in 2022 by Moji Karimi (CEO and chairman of Cemvita), Prabhdeep Sekhon (CEO of Eclipse), Tara Karimi, and Rayyan Islam. The company closed an $8 million series A this year and has plans to raise another round in 2026.

Loop Bioproducts

Agricultural chemical manufacturing company Loop Bioproducts leverages the physiology of prickly pear cactus grown in Texas to produce bioenergy, food, and remediate industrial wastewater streams. The company uses its remote sensing technology, proprietary image-based machine learning model, and R&D innovation to capture raw biogas from the cactuses and is focused on scaling cactuses as an industrial crop on land.

Rhiannon Parker founded Loop Bioproducts in 2023.

Mars Materials

Clean chemical manufacturing business Mars Materials is working to convert captured carbon into resources, such as carbon fiber and wastewater treatment chemicals. The company develops and produces its drop-in chemical products in Houston and uses an in-licensed process for the National Renewable Energy Lab to produce acrylonitrile, which is used to produce plastics, synthetic fibers, and rubbers. The company reports that it plans to open its first commercial plant in the next 18 months.

Founded in 2019 by CEO Aaron Fitzgerald, CTO Kristian Gubsch, and lead engineer Trey Sheridan, the company has raised just under $1 million in capital and is backed by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy, Shell, Black & Veatch, and other organizations.

Solidec

Chemical manufacturing company Solidec has developed autonomous generators that extract molecules from water and air and converts them into pure chemicals and fuels that are free of carbon emissions onsite, eliminating the need for transport, storage, and permitting. The company was founded around innovations developed by Rice University associate professor Haotian Wang.

The company was selected for the Chevron Technology Ventures’ catalyst program, Greentown Labs, NSF I-Corps and was part of the first cohort of the Activate Houston program. It won first place at the 2024 startup pitch competition at CERAWeek. Solidec was founded in 2023 by Wang, who serves as chief scientist, CEO Ryan DuChanois, and CTO Yang Xia. It closed a $2.5 million seed round earlier this year.

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Rice University team develops eco-friendly method to destroy 'forever chemicals' in water

clean water research

Rice University researchers have teamed up with South Korean scientists to develop the first eco-friendly technology that captures and destroys toxic “forever chemicals,” or PFAS, in water.

PFAS have been linked to immune system disruption, certain cancers, liver damage and reproductive disorders. They can be found in water, soil and air, as well as in products like Teflon pans, waterproof clothing and food packaging. They do not degrade easily and are difficult to remove.

Thus far, PFAS cleanup methods have relied on adsorption, in which molecules cling to materials like activated carbon or ion-exchange resins. But these methods tend to have limited capacity, low efficiency, slow performance and can create additional waste.

The Rice-led study, published in the journal Advanced Materials, centered on a layered double hydroxide (LDH) material made from copper and aluminum that could rapidly capture PFAS and be used to destroy the chemicals.

The study was led by Rice professor Youngkun Chung, a postdoctoral fellow under the mentorship of Michael S. Wong. It was conducted in collaboration with Seoktae Kang, professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and Keon-Ham Kim, professor at Pukyung National University, who first discovered the LDH material.

The team evaluated the LDH material in river water, tap water and wastewater. And, according to Rice, that material’s unique copper-aluminum layers and charge imbalances created an ideal binding environment to capture PFAS molecules.

“To my astonishment, this LDH compound captured PFAS more than 1,000 times better than other materials,” Chung, lead author of the study and now a fellow at Rice’s WaTER (Water Technologies, Entrepreneurship and Research) Institute and Sustainability Institute, said in a news release. “It also worked incredibly fast, removing large amounts of PFAS within minutes, about 100 times faster than commercial carbon filters.”

Next, Chung, along with Rice professors Pedro Alvarez and James Tour, worked to develop an eco-friendly, sustainable method of thermally decomposing the PFAS captured on the LDH material. They heated saturated material with calcium carbonate, which eliminated more than half of the trapped PFAS without releasing toxic by-products.

The team believes the study’s results could potentially have large-scale applications in industrial cleanups and municipal water treatments.

“We are excited by the potential of this one-of-a-kind LDH-based technology to transform how PFAS-contaminated water sources are treated in the near future,” Wong added in the news release. “It’s the result of an extraordinary international collaboration and the creativity of young researchers.”

Axiom Space announces new CEO amid strategic leadership change

new leader

Six months after promoting Tejpaul Bhatia from chief revenue officer to CEO, commercial space infrastructure and human spaceflight services provider Axiom Space has replaced him.

On Oct. 15, Houston-based Axiom announced Jonathan Cirtain has succeeded Bhatia as CEO. Bhatia joined Axiom in 2021. Cirtain remains the company’s president, a role he assumed in June, according to his LinkedIn profile.

In a news release, Axiom said Cirtain’s appointment as CEO is a “strategic leadership change” aimed at advancing the company’s development of space infrastructure.

Axiom hired Cirtain as president in June, according to his LinkedIn profile. The company didn’t publicly announce that move.

Kam Ghaffarian, co-founder and executive chairman of Axiom, said Cirtain’s “proven track record of leadership and commitment to excellence align perfectly with our mission of building era-defining space infrastructure that will drive exploration and fuel the global space economy.”

Aside from praising Cirtain, Ghaffarian expressed his “sincere gratitude” for Bhatia’s work at Axiom, including his leadership as CEO during “a significant transition period.”

Bhatia was promoted to CEO in April after helping Axiom gain more than $1 billion in contracts, Space News reported. He succeeded Ghaffarian as CEO. Axiom didn’t indicate whether Bhatia quit or was terminated.

Cirtain, an astrophysicist, was a senior executive at BWX Technologies, a supplier of nuclear components and fuel, for eight years before joining Axiom. Earlier, Cirtain spent nearly nine years in various roles at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. He previously co-founded a machine learning company specializing in Earth observation.

“Axiom Space is pioneering the commercialization of low-Earth orbit infrastructure while accelerating advancements in human spaceflight technologies,” Cirtain said. “I look forward to continuing our team’s important work of driving innovation to support expanded access to space and off-planet capabilities that will underpin the future of space exploration.”

Among other projects, Axiom is developing the world’s first commercial space station, creating next-generation spacesuits for astronauts and sending astronauts on low-Earth orbit missions.

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