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

future focused

The Wall Street Journal has released its inaugural list of the best S&P 500 companies for the future. Photo courtesy HPE

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

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Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental, said the company's Stratos DAC project is on track to begin capturing CO2 later this year. Photo via 1pointfive.com

Oxy's $1.3B Texas carbon capture facility on track to launch this year

gearing up

Houston-based Occidental Petroleum is gearing up to start removing CO2 from the atmosphere at its $1.3 billion direct air capture (DAC) project in the Midland-Odessa area.

Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental, said during the company’s recent second-quarter earnings call that the Stratos project — being developed by carbon capture and sequestration subsidiary 1PointFive — is on track to begin capturing CO2 later this year.

“We are immensely proud of the achievements to date and the exceptional record of safety performance as we advance towards commercial startup,” Hollub said of Stratos.

Carbon dioxide captured by Stratos will be stored underground or be used for enhanced oil recovery.

Oxy says Stratos is the world’s largest DAC facility. It’s designed to pull 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air and either store it underground or use it for enhanced oil recovery. Enhanced oil recovery extracts oil from unproductive reservoirs.

Most of the carbon credits that’ll be generated by Stratos through 2030 have already been sold to organizations such as Airbus, AT&T, All Nippon Airways, Amazon, the Houston Astros, the Houston Texans, JPMorgan, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks and TD Bank.

The infrastructure business of investment manager BlackRock has pumped $550 million into Stratos through a joint venture with 1PointFive.

As it gears up to kick off operations at Stratos, Occidental is also in talks with XRG, the energy investment arm of the United Arab Emirates-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., to form a joint venture for the development of a DAC facility in South Texas. Occidental has been awarded up to $650 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to build the South Texas DAC hub.

The South Texas project, to be located on the storied King Ranch, will be close to industrial facilities and energy infrastructure along the Gulf Coast. Initially, the roughly 165-square-mile site is expected to capture 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, with the potential to store up to 3 billion metric tons of CO2 per year.

“We believe that carbon capture and DAC, in particular, will be instrumental in shaping the future energy landscape,” Hollub said.

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

Eight Houston-area energy employers ranked on StartupBlink's new Corporate Startup Activity Index 2025. Photo via Getty Images

Houston energy giants rank high on new corporate startup activity report

startup support

Eight major players in Houston’s energy industry rank among the world’s top 20 energy companies for corporate startup activity.

The inaugural Corporate Startup Activity Index 2025, published by StartupBlink, ranks global corporations by industry. The eight Houston-area employers fall into the index’s energy and environment category.

Researchers from StartupBlink, an innovation research platform, scored more than 370 companies based on three factors: corporate involvement in startup activity, startup success and ecosystem integration.

The eight Houston-area energy employers that landed in the energy and environment category’s top 20 are:

No. 3 BP. Score: 13.547. U.S. headquarters in Houston.
No. 5 Saudi Aramco. Score: 7.405. Americas headquarters in Houston.
No. 7 Eni. Score: 6.255. Headquarters of Eni U.S. Operating Co. in Houston.
No. 8 Shell. Score: 6.217. U.S. headquarters in Houston.
No. 11 Occidental Petroleum. Score: 5.347. Global headquarters in Houston.
No. 15 Engie. Score: 3.352. North American headquarters in Houston.
No. 17 Repsol. Score: 2.980. U.S. headquarters for oil and gas operations in The Woodlands.
No. 19 Chevron. Score: 2.017. Global headquarters in Houston.

“Building a startup is hard, and navigating corporate innovation can be just as complex. This ranking is a step toward making the connection between startups and corporations more transparent, enabling startups and corporations to collaborate more effectively for mutual success,” said Eli David Rokah, CEO of StartupBlink.

Salesforce topped the global index with a score of 380.090, followed by Intel, Google, Qualcomm, and Comcast.

The Department of Energy has doled out funding to four Houston companies. Photo via Getty Images

4 Houston companies snag DOE funding for carbon advancement

freshly granted

Four Houston companies have captured more than $45 million in federal funding to promote the capture, transportation, use, and storage of tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

The U.S. Department of Energy on May 17 announced funding for these four Houston companies:

BP Corporation North America Inc. — $33,411,193. The money will be earmarked for two commercial-scale storage sites along the Texas Gulf Coast. The sites will be able to ultimately store up to 15 million metric tons of CO2 per year.
Timberlands Sequestration LLC — $23,779,020. The funding will go toward a biomass carbon removal and storage project for the Alabama River Cellulose pulp and paper mill in Monroe County, Alabama. Atlanta-based Georgia-Pacific LLC owns the mill.
Magnolia Sequestration Hub LLC — $21,570,784. The money will help finance the Magnolia Sequestration Hub in Allen Parish, Louisiana, with an estimated 300 million metric tons of total CO2 storage capacity. Magnolia is a subsidiary of Houston-based Occidental Petroleum Corp.
Bluebonnet Sequestration Hub LLC — $16,480,117. The funding will be spent on development of the Bluebonnet Sequestration Hub along the Texas Gulf Coast, with the potential for more than 350 million metric tons of CO2 storage capacity. Bluebonnet is a subsidiary of Occidental.

Another Texas company received $3 million in Department of Energy (DOE) funding. Howard Midstream Energy Partners LLC of San Antonio will perform a study for a system capable of moving up to 250 million metric tons of CO2 per year from numerous sources to storage sites on the Gulf Coast — from the Port of Corpus Christi to the Mississippi River.

In all, the Department of Energy announced $251 million in funding for 12 projects in seven states aimed at bolstering the U.S. carbon management capabilities. The money comes from the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was enacted in 2021.

“Thanks to historic clean energy investments, DOE is building out the infrastructure needed to slash harmful carbon pollution from industry and the power sector, revitalize local economies, and unlock enormous public health benefits,” U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm says in a news release.

DOE says carbon dioxide emissions are fueling global warming, which has heightened the threat of droughts, severe fires, rising sea levels, floods, catastrophic storms, and declining biodiversity.

Precedence Research estimates the value of the global market for carbon capture and storage was $4.91 billion in 2022, and it expects the market value to reach $35.7 billion by 2032.

The Ion named three corporate partners ahead of its annual innovation-focused festival. Photo courtesy of the Ion

Houston innovation hub adds Oxy, United, and Woodside as partners

onboarding

Houston’s Ion innovation hub has recruited three heavyweight corporate partners, the hub announced earlier this week.

The new partners are:

Houston-based energy company Occidental (known as Oxy).
United Airlines Ventures, the sustainability-focused VC arm of Chicago-based United Airlines. United operates a major hub in Houston.
Australia-based Woodside Energy, which maintains an office in Houston.

Oxy, United Airlines Ventures, and Woodside will share their expertise in support of Ion’s mission to transform Houston into a global innovation ecosystem, according to an Ion news release. In addition, they will participate in Ion programming and network with Ion affiliates. Executives from all three of the new partners will serve on the Ion Leadership Advisory Roundtable.

“Welcoming our newest partners into Ion’s ecosystem is a further testament to our momentum in the aerospace and energy transition,” says Jan Odegard, who became executive director of the Ion in 2021 after a year of holding the interim position. “Each organization brings their own culture of innovation that aligns with what we are doing at the Ion.”

Michael Leskinen, president of United Airlines Ventures, says the VC firm believes “the Ion will be the epicenter for Houston’s rapidly growing innovation community — a one-stop shop to share ideas, foster startups, and to develop relationships with Houston’s brightest companies and academia.”

Oxy, United Airlines Ventures, and Woodside join Ion corporate partners such as:

Aramco Americas
Baker Botts
BP
Chevron
ExxonMobil
Global Custom Commerce
Intel
Microsoft
Transocean

The Ion announced the new corporate partners in advance of the second annual Ion Activation Festival, set for May 17-19. The Ion and Rice Management Co. host the festival, which shines a spotlight on entrepreneurship and innovation in Houston.

Activities will take place primarily at the Ion’s 16-acre campus. To register for the festival, visit the Ion’s website.

The inaugural festival, held in 2022, drew more than 2,500 attendees.

Oxy's Permian Basin carbon capture project has a news partner and the Astros are thinking about their climate goals. Rendering via 1pointfive.com

Houston energy giant makes moves on emissions with Astros deal, new tech in the Permian Basin

oxy updates

Houston-based energy company Occidental is capturing a ton of attention with its carbon capture initiative.

Occidental’s carbon capture subsidiary, 1PointFive, recently said it’s developing a carbon capture and sequestration hub on a 55,000-acre site along the Gulf Coast in Southeast Texas. The hub will be able to hold about 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide.

The Bluebonnet Hub, expected to be operating in 2026, will be located in Chambers, Liberty, and Jefferson counties near coastal refineries, chemical plants, and manufacturing facilities. Chambers County is the Houston metro area.

“This hub is located between two of the largest industrial corridors in Texas so captured CO2 can be efficiently transported and safely sequestered,” says Jeff Alvarez, president of sequestration at 1PointFive. “Rather than starting from scratch with individual capture and sequestration projects, companies can plug into this hub for access to shared carbon infrastructure.”

Home run on emissions

Another development at 1PointFive involves the Houston Astros baseball team.

The Astros recently agreed to buy CO2 removal credits from 1PointFive’s carbon capture plant being built in Ector County, whose county seat is Odessa. Under this deal, CO2 captured by the company’s equipment will be sequestered in underground saline reservoirs that aren’t affiliated with oil and gas production.

Over the next three years, the Astros will use the removal credits to help the team achieve a carbon-neutral footprint at Minute Maid Park.

“We remain committed to continuous improvement of our stadium for our fans, and purchasing carbon removal credits is an important investment for us,” Marcel Braithwaite, senior vice president of business operations for the Astros, says in a news release.

Progress in the Permian Basin

Furthermore, 1PointFive is making progress on its carbon capture plant being developed in West Texas’ Permian Basin. The company recently tapped Orlando, Florida-based Siemens Energy to supply two compressors for the plant, which is set to capture more than 500,000 metric tons of CO2 per year.

Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental, says in a news release that the Permian Basin plant will help meet the Paris Agreement’s Paris climate change goals and reduce global emissions.

The Permian Basin facility, with an estimated price tag of $800 million to $1 billion, is on track to open by late 2024.

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7 finalists compete to be crowned Houston's 2026 Startup of the Year

Cast Your Vote

Each year, the Houston Innovation Awards program recognizes the best and brightest in the local innovation community. And while most of the award winners are selected by our esteemed panel of judges, one winner is determined by you.

Voting is now open for our people's choice award: 2026 Startup of the Year. Seven exceptional finalists are in the running for the title, and your votes will determine who wins.

From innovative platforms benefiting the education, commerce, health, investment and IT sectors to next-gen memory technology and improvements for robotic supply chains, these startups are making an impact in Houston and beyond.

Read about our Startup of the Year finalists and their missions and achievements below, then cast your vote. You can vote once per day through Nov. 13, so make your voice heard.

The winner, along with the winners in all other categories, will be revealed in mid-November right here on InnovationMap.com. Stay tuned.

FluxWorks

Fluxworks is aiming to shape the future of the robotic supply chain with its flagship Celestial Gear. The magnetic gearbox offers a contactless design that leads to less wear, debris and maintenance. In 2026, Fluxworks closed a $5 million seed round to scale the product.

IronLattice

IronLattice is developing next-generation, ferroelectric memory technology for AI and high-performance computing workloads. In June 2026, the company closed a $3 million angel round. It began wafer production this fall, with its first working device targeted for completion in spring 2027.

Lumino

Lumino is a unified commerce ecosystem and payments platform designed to provide businesses with the technology, payments infrastructure, intelligence and tools they need to grow while creating impact in their communities. Lumino publicly launched its platform in 2026 in Houston and is rolling out its next stage of global expansion.

Progress Report

Progress Report is a K-12 learning-intelligence platform designed to go beyond identifying that a student is struggling. It traces performance to learning gaps and prerequisite skills, helping educators understand where a student is struggling and what may be causing it. Progress Report recently released a fully built production platform and launched pilots with 35 educators and 200 students across Texas and Arizona.

Rosarium Health

Rosarium Health is a platform that coordinates the full process for home accessibility upgrades and modifications for seniors and people living with disabilities. In 2026, the startup announced $6 million in seed funding and scaled to a national network of 800-plus clinicians and 3,000-plus contractors.

Thread

Thread is building an AI-powered service desk platform for Managed Service Providers (MSPs). Its technology combines agentic AI, assistive AI, automation, and real-time communication to help MSPs resolve IT support requests faster and with less manual work.

TokenRoster

TokenRoster is an AI-powered assessment platform for early-stage startups, providing founders with an investor-grade evaluation of their company before the pitch and giving investors a curated roster of vetted companies. Since launch, TokenRoster has grown to 65 companies and 43 founder accounts, with 10 assessment frameworks available.

Houston Innovation Awards honor Don Kendall Jr. with posthumous Trailblazer Legacy Award

lasting legacy

Every year, the Houston Innovation Awards honor one Houstonian with the Trailblazer Award, whose impact is felt throughout the city's innovation and business ecosystem.

This year, the Trailblazer Legacy Award will be given posthumously to Don Kendall Jr., who died in September while on a trip to the Republic of the Congo with the Jane Goodall Institute, one of the many organizations he was deeply involved with.

Kendall's obituary puts it simply: "Don’s truest passions were conservation and his family." Many saw those passions play out in his career, particularly in the role he played in shaping Houston's clean energy sector.

Kendall served as general partner of New Climate Ventures, a Houston-based early-stage venture capital firm that invests in next-gen energy, materials and fuel technologies and startups. The firm's portfolio includes Houston-based clean energy companies like Solidec, Syzygy Plasmonics and Rheom Materials.

Kendall was also founding managing director and CEO of Kenmont Capital LP. He ran a $500 million distressed debt and credit-based hedge fund focused on the energy, power and transportation sectors and one of the top-performing private equity funds under the Kenmont umbrella.

He served on the board of Talos Energy, American Midstream Partners, Syzygy Plasmonics, Tangent Energy, Stream Energy and others. Notably, he served as Chair of the Special Committee of the SolarCity board during its acquisition by Tesla in 2016. According to his obituary, Kendall negotiated with "Elon Musk in the middle of the night on a rickety pier in Indonesia after eluding a poisonous snake."

Outside of the clean energy space, Kendall also served on the boards of the Jane Goodall Institute, Earthwatch International and Ecological Defense Group. He also served as vice chair of the Houston Zoo Inc. and chair of its Conservation Committee.

Kendall was selected by our esteemed panel of judges to receive the 2026 Trailblazer Legacy Award. The panel includes carbon removal entrepreneur and CEO of Houston-based Mars Materials Aaron Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald shares the profound impact Kendall had on his career and those of many others.

"Honoring Don with the Trailblazer Legacy Award is a fitting tribute to a leader whose impact spanned civic work with the Houston Zoo, wildlife conservation, and the growth of our startup ecosystem," Fitzgerald says. "He paired a keen eye for potential with the relentless drive to unlock it. For Mars Materials, his early backing carried us through a critical valley when we needed belief the most, and his presence as a personal mentor is profoundly missed."

Don was an avid traveler, cyclist and collector. He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Diane S. Kendall. A celebration of life will be held early in 2027.

2 Houston suburbs rank among 5 best cities to retire, says U.S. News

Slowing Down

Houston and nine of its suburbs are earning new acclaim on U.S. News and World Report's just-released list of the best U.S. cities for retirees in 2027. Two northern suburbs, The Woodlands and Spring, are resting easy among the top five nationwide.

The 2027 Best Places to Retire list evaluated over 850 U.S. cities based on six livability metrics that best serve American retirees: quality of life, affordability, health care, retiree taxes, job market, and population and migration. The top 250 finalist cities were then ranked nationally and by city size.

Midland, Michigan topped the list for the second consecutive year and is followed by Homosassa Springs, Florida (No. 2) and Weirton, West Virginia (No. 3).

The Woodlands and Spring respectively maintained their standings as the No. 4 and No. 5 best cities for retirees for the second year in a row. The Woodlands topped the separate list of the best midsized U.S. cities to retire, while Spring landed 5th among the smallest U.S. cities.

Houston proper was declared the No. 2 best big city for retirees, and it ranked 89th overall. Elsewhere in the metro, Pearland (No. 13) and Conroe (No. 14) ranked just outside the overall top 10 but ranked 4th and 5th among the best midsized cities for retirees.

U.S. News said affordability is the "most considered factor" when it comes to picking the best place to live a low-stress retirement life, and that's what Houston and its neighbors deliver. Affordable cities also give retirees "a sense of security and comfort as they live out their golden years," according to Megan Wood, U.S. News assistant managing editor of home services and real estate.

"It’s no secret that affordability is top of mind for Americans this year, which is why U.S. News updated its weighting criteria to better align with what retirees prioritize," Wood said. "The 2027 rankings reflect key metrics used to highlight the places that
best suit retiree needs."

Sugar Land was declared the 10th best place to live in the U.S. in a separate U.S. News report earlier this year, but it doesn't quite meet the expectations for retirees. This particular suburb ranked as the 45th best overall city to retire, but it fared better in the city size ranking and landed 13th among the biggest U.S. cities.

Pasadena also surprised as the 85th best place to retire nationwide in this report, despite being hailed as the No. 3 best city to retire in Texas by RetirementLiving.com.

Three more Houston neighbors ranked among the top 100 overall best places to retire for 2027: League City (No. 25), Missouri City (No. 49), and Baytown (No. 88).

These are the top 10 best U.S. cities to retire for 2027:

No. 1 – Midland, Michigan
No. 2 – Homosassa Springs, Florida
No. 3 – Weirton, West Virginia
No. 4 – The Woodlands
No. 5 – Spring, Texas
No. 6 – Rio Rancho, New Mexico
No. 7 – Altoona, Pennsylvania
No. 8 – Paducah, Kentucky
No. 9 – Lynchburg, Virginia
No. 10 – Palm Coast, Florida

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This article first appeared on CultureMap.com.

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