Innovative Canadian company taps into Houston market to better serve energy customers

in the pipeline

INGU Solutions has established its U.S. office in Houston — and is ready to tap into the city's energy industry with its revolutionary pipeline inspection-as-a-service model. Photo via ingu.com

On average, oil and gas pipelines are inspected every five years, which, considering pipelines in the United States are more than 60 years old, just isn't cutting it. Operators face costly and damaging leaks on cracks and incidences that are totally avoidable with more regular inspection. The issue is inspection isn't an easy process — unless INGU Solutions is involved.

The Alberta, Canada-based company has created a hardware component — called a Piper — that's about the size of a baseball. The device can be run through pipes of any size to inspect and detect internal issues. INGU has an inspection-as-a-service model so that whatever data is collected by the Pipers is analyzed and provided to clients without any more steps from them.

The idea for the device came to John van Pol, founder and CEO, who has a background in nuclear physics and founded the company in 2015. Now, he runs the company with his daughter, Anouk van Pol, who started as an analyst and working in the field for INGU and now serves the company as co-founder and COO.

The Piper is smaller than a baseball and can flow through any sized pipe used in the oil and gas industry. Photo via ingu.com

In 2017, INGU was selected to be a part of Chevron's inaugural Catalyst Program cohort and Chevron Technology Ventures — along with two other U.S. investors — contributed to the company's series A round in 2019. This led to INGU establishing its U.S. operations in Houston in order to grow their American team and to be closer to customers. Then, the pandemic hit.

“The idea was to be closer to our customers,” Anouk tells InnovationMap. “Houston is the oil and gas hub, and just being able to be in [our clients'] offices and be there in person it just helps. I hope at one point COVID passes and that we can make use out of it a bit more.

"The other thing is you open up your market on the hiring side," she says, adding that the company has two U.S. employees now.

INGU first had an office in The Cannon, but now operates locally at The Ion in the Common Desk coworking space with an office suite to support its local team. In 2019, the company was named to Plug and Play's inaugural Houston cohort and as a most-promising business by Rice Alliance at OTC.

Anouk, who was selected for Forbes 30 Under 30 in energy in 2020, and her father both split their time between Houston and Alberta, usually alternating so that the van Pols have a presence in each office at all times, but both are currently in town for the 34th annual Pipeline Pigging and Integrity Management conference, or PPIM. It's the OTC for the pipeline industry, Anouk says.

Ahead of the conference and despite the challenges the pandemic has posed for INGU, Anouk says the company has seen significant growth over the past two years.

"We grew 60 percent last year," she says. "which is pretty good for what's been happening over the past two years."

From a hardware perspective, the pandemic's impact has been relatively small. The Pipers are designed with off-the-shelf materials, which INGU stocked up on — avoiding any supply chain shortages. Additionally, INGU can send the devices to pipeline operators, who can deploy them while the devices send the collected data directly to INGU.

Anouk van Pol is the company's COO. Photo via LinkedIn

The company, which anticipates a secondary series A round this year in addition to tripling its annual revenue, has an environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, component to its business. While half of INGU's clients are in the energy industry and Pipers contribute to reducing waste within oilfield operations, the other half of customers are within the water industry. Water infrastructure is 100 years old, and Anouk says about 6 billion gallons of water are wasted each day.

"That's 40 percent of all water, and because so much water is lost, you need more power and energy," Anouk says. "Where we see oil and gas is aimed at prevention in well condition, etc., the water market is doing a lot of leak protection."

In both industries, Pipers are preventing waste and allowing companies to make positive moves in their ESG plans.

INGU has clients all over the world and servicing these various types of pipes and businesses is growing INGU's database, which better benefits their inspection-as-a-service capabilities.

"The more we grow, the more we can and will learn, and then go in this self-fulfilling cycle," Anouk says.

Using APIs, organizations can more easily combine their own internal data. Getty Images

Energy companies need to integrate new functions in order to better utilize data, says this expert

Houston, home to one of Cognite's U.S. headquarters, is the energy capital of the world. But while many oil and gas industry players and partners come together here, much of the data they use — or want to employ — remains siloed.

There's no lack of data. Connected devices are a wellspring of enterprise resource planning data, depth-based trajectories, piping and instrumentation diagrams, and sensor values. But incompatible operational data systems, poor data infrastructure, and restricted data access prevent organizations from easily combining data to solve problems and create solutions.

We understand these challenges because we work alongside some of the biggest operators, OEMs and engineering companies in the oil and gas business. Lundin Petroleum, Aker Energy OMV, and Aker BP are among our customers, for example.

Flexible, open application programming interfaces can address the challenges noted above. APIs enable users to search, filter and do computations on data without downloading full data sets. And they abstract the complexity of underlying storage formats.

As a result, data scientists and process engineers can access data in an efficient manner, spending more time on their use cases and less effort contending with technical details. Using APIs, organizations can more easily combine their own internal data. APIs also simplify the process of using data from industry partners and other sources.

Most companies have slightly different work processes. But common API standards can help a company combine software services and platforms from others in a way that matches its own business logic and internal processes. That can allow the company to differentiate itself from competitors by employing services from the best suppliers to create innovative solutions.

Standardizing APIs across the oil and gas industry would open the door to a community of developers, which could create custom applications and connect existing market solutions. Then more new and exciting applications and services would reach the market faster.

To ensure adoption and success of such a standardization effort, the APIs would need to be well crafted and intuitive to use. These APIs would have to include the business logic required to perform the operations to empower users. In addition, APIs would need to define and allow for the sharing of desired information objects in a consistent way.

Best practices in defining common APIs for sharing data within the industry include:

  • Introducing APIs iteratively, driven by concrete use cases with business value
  • Ensuring all services using the API provide relevant output and insights in a structured machine-readable format, enabling ingestion into the API to ensure continuous enrichment of the data set
  • Making all data searchable
  • Preventing underlying technology from being exposed through the APIs to ensure continuous optimization and allow companies to implement their technology of choice
  • Supporting all external data sharing through an open, well-documented and well-versioned API, using the OpenAPI standard

If oil and gas industry operators define APIs, suppliers will embrace them. That will "grease" the value chain, allowing it to move with less friction and waste.

Operations and maintenance are a natural place for API harmonization to start. Standardized APIs also can enable operators to aggregate and use environmental, equipment and systems, health and safety, and other data. That will accelerate digital transformation in oil and gas and enable companies to leverage innovative solutions coming from the ecosystem, reduce waste, and improve operations, making production more sustainable.

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Francois Laborie is the general manager of Cognite North Americas.

Houston-based Tachyus closed a $15 million Series B round. Photo courtesy of Thomas Miller/Breitling Energy

Houston oil and gas software company closes $15 million round led by local PE firm

Money on the mind

It's pay day for Houston-based Tachyus. the data-driven software company has closed its Series B fundraising round at $15 million. The round was led by Houston-based Cottonwood Venture Partners, a private equity firm that funds companies using technology to solve problems within the energy industry.

Tachyus was founded in 2013 in Silicon Valley and recently relocated to Houston. The fresh funds will go into growing its cloud-based, artificial intelligence-enabled platform.

"In this economic environment, oil and gas operators need disruptive tools to optimize their fields," Tachyus CEO and co-founder, Paul Orland, says in a release. "This investment allows us to reach more customers and accelerate the delivery of new technology that improves our clients' business performance."

The company has already grown its client base and has customers in Argentina, Europe, and Asia. Tachyus joins several other tech-focused energy startups in CVP's portfolio, including Ambyint, Novi Labs, and SitePro. Houston-based Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. served Tachyus as its financial adviser.

"As the oil and gas industry evolves in the face of new commercial challenges, operators need to focus on getting the best performance from their assets, and Tachyus' technology has a track record of doing just that," says Jeremy Arendt, managing partner of CVP, in the release. "We are excited to partner with the Tachyus team to expand their reach and empower customers to optimize production across their fields."

Tachyus closed its last round in 2016 with a $4 million investment from Primwest, according to CrunchBase. Before that, the company had raised several million.

Last year, the startup restructured its C-suite. Tachyus co-founder Dakin Sloss transitioned from CEO to chairman, and Orland, who was previously CTO, took the reins, according to a release.

Paul Orland is CEO of Tachyus. Photo via tachyus.com

James Yockey is a co-founder of Landdox, which recently integrated with ThoughtTrace. Courtesy of Landdox

These two Houston software companies are making contracts less cumbersome for oil and gas companies

Team work

The biggest asset of most oil and gas companies is their leasehold: the contracts or deeds that give the company the right to either drill wells and produce oil and gas on someone else's land, or give them title to that land outright. A typical oil and gas company is involved in thousands of these uniquely negotiated leases, and the software to keep these documents organized hasn't been updated in more than a decade, says James Yockey, founder of Houston-based Landdox.

Landdox does just that: provides an organizational framework for companies' contracts and leaseholds. The company recently entered into an integration with Houston-based ThoughtTrace, an artificial intelligence program that can scan and pull out key words and provisions from cumbersome, complicated contracts and leaseholds.

With this integration, companies can use ThoughtTrace to easily identify key provisions of their contracts, and then sync up those provisions with their Landdox account. From there, Landdox will organize those provisions into easy-to-use tools like calendars, reminders and more.

The framework behind the integration
The concept behind Landdox isn't entirely new — there are other software platforms built to organize oil and gas company's assets — but it's the first company in this space that's completely cloud-based, Yockey says.

"Within these oil and gas leases and other contracts are really sticky provisions … if you don't understand them, and you're not managing them, it can cause you to forfeit a huge part of your asset base," Yockey says. "It can be a seven-, eight-, or nine-digit loss."

These contracts and leases can be as long as 70 or 80 pages, Yockey says, and have tricky provisions buried in them. Before the integration with ThoughtTrace, oil and gas companies would still have to manually pour over these contracts and identify key provisions that could then be sent over to Landdox, which would organize the data and documents in an easy-to-use platform. The ThoughtTrace integration removes a time-consuming aspect of the process for oil and gas companies.

"[ThoughtTrace] identifies the most needle moving provisions and obligations and terms that get embedded in these contracts by mineral owners," Yockey says. "It's a real source of leverage for the oil and gas companies. You can feed ThoughtTrace the PDF of the lease and their software will show you were these provisions are buried."

The origin story
Landdox was founded in 2015, and is backed by a small group of angel investors. Yockey says the investors provided a "little backing," and added that Landdox is a "very capital-efficient" software company.

Landdox and ThoughtTrace connected in 2017, when the companies were working with a large, private oil and gas company in Austin. The Austin-based oil and gas company opted to use Landdox and ThoughtTrace in parallel, which inspired the two companies to develop an integrated prototype.

"We built a prototype, but it was clear that there was a bigger opportunity to make this even easier," Yockey says. "To quote the CEO of ThoughtTrace, he called [the integration] an 'easy button.'"

The future of ERP software
Landdox's average customer is a private equity-backed E&P or mineral fund, Yockey says, thought the company also works with closely held, family-owned companies. Recently, though, Landdox has been adding a new kind of company to its client base.

"What's interesting is we're starting to add a new customer persona," Yockey says. "The bigger companies – the publicly traded oil and gas companies –have all kinds of different ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software running their business, but leave a lot to be desired in terms of what their team really needs."

At a recent North American Prospect Expo summit, Yockey says that half a dozen large capitalization oil and gas producers invited Landdox to their offices, to discuss potentially supplementing the company's ERP software.

"Instead of trying to be all things to all people, we stay in our lane, but find cool ways to connect with other software (companies)," Yockey says.

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Houston startup raises $6M to scale home-based healthcare platform

fresh funding

As healthcare systems race to expand care beyond hospitals and into the home, investors are placing bigger bets on the infrastructure needed to make that shift possible.

This month, Rosarium Health announced it has raised $6 million in seed funding led by Kalos Ventures, with participation from ResilienceVC, Rock Health Capital, Symphonic Capital, Black Tech Nations Ventures and others.

The investment will help the Houston-based startup continue to build its platform, which features a national network of 800-plus clinicians and 3,000-plus contractors to coordinate home accessibility upgrades and modifications for seniors and people living with disabilities.

For founder and CEO Cameron Carter, the company’s mission grew out of firsthand caregiving experiences.

“From my own personal caregiving experiences, I realized that the benefits exist on paper, but not in reality,” Carter said in a news release. “Families are being left to figure out the paperwork and installations all on their own, which shouldn’t be how this works.”

While Medicare Advantage and Medicaid plans have expanded coverage for home-based services and accessibility modifications, the logistics behind delivering those services often remain fragmented.

Rosarium’s platform coordinates the entire process, from clinical assessments and referrals to contractor management, documentation, reimbursement and installation.

“A clinician can document that a home isn’t safe and a plan can approve a benefit, but there’s no one that’s responsible for making sure the work actually gets done,” Carter says. “We built the missing piece.”

The company was founded in 2021 as Rose Health and was a 2023 participant in the Texas Medical Center’s Accelerator for HealthTech program. It has scaled quickly, building a network of more than 800 clinicians and 3,000 contractors across 34 states.

Rosarium is currently in-network for 1.2 million Medicare and Medicaid lives, with projected coverage expected to reach nearly 4 million by the end of the year, according to the release.

“We’re excited to back Cameron because he and the team at Rosarium are building the infrastructure healthcare needs right now to make the home a safe and comfortable place of care,” Kate Ballinger, investor at Kalos Ventures, added in the release.

As part of the recent investment, Ballinger will join Rosarium’s board of directors.

With eyes on the future, Rosarium plans to grow its partnerships with Medicaid and Medicare Advantage plans, including CalViva and Community Health Plan of Imperial Valley, strengthening its presence in California while expanding access to underserved communities.

Additionally, Carter predicts that home-based healthcare will be part of a broader transformation happening across the industry.

“There’s a growing recognition that health outcomes are shaped by what happens in the home,” he said in the release. “The future of healthcare isn’t just treating people after something goes wrong. It’s creating environments that help prevent those problems in the first place.”

Houston business mogul Tilman Fertitta acquires Caesars in $17.6B deal

Money Moves

Houston billionaire Tilman Fertitta may currently be serving as America’s ambassador to Italy, but his company is as busy as ever. Fresh off its move to revive the Houston Comets WNBA franchise, his company, Fertitta Entertainment, has announced a $17.6 billion deal to acquire Caesars Entertainment, Inc.

Speculation about the deal has been circulating since at least March, according to various media reports. The deal combines Fertitta’s well-known Golden Nugget casino brand with all of the properties in the Caesars’ portfolio, including Las Vegas hotels Caesars Palace, Harrah's, Paris Las Vegas, Planet Hollywood, Horseshoe, The LINQ Hotel, Flamingo, and The Cromwell.

Overall, the combined company will include 60 domestic casino resorts and gaming facilities; online gaming including sports betting, iCasino, and Caesar’s online poker platform; retail sports betting at over 200 third-party locations through the William Hill brand; and over 550 Fertitta Entertainment outlets, including more than 450 Landry's full-service restaurants across America. The companies will combine their loyalty programs, Caesars Rewards, Golden Nugget's 24 Karat Select Club, and Landry's Select Club.

The terms will see Caesars’ shareholders receive $31 per share. Fertitta Entertainment will also acquire approximately $11.9 billion of Caesars' outstanding debt.

The transaction will be financed through a combination of equity contributed by Fertitta Entertainment, assumed Caesars' debt, and new committed debt financing arranged by a group consisting of 10 banks. It is subject to approval by Caesars’ shareholders and government regulators.

Fertitta Entertainment is the Houston-based company behind a diverse array of hospitality businesses, including The Golden Nugget, The Post Oak Hotel, River Oaks District, the Kemah Boardwalk, and Houston’s Downtown Aquarium.

It also operates a number of prominent restaurant brands, including Mastro's Restaurants, Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steakhouse, Morton's The Steakhouse, The Palm, McCormick & Schmick's, Landry's Seafood House, The Oceanaire Seafood Room, and Saltgrass Steak House.

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This article first appeared on CultureMap.com.

4 Houston-area institutions get $8M for cancer research facilities

fighting cancer

Cancer research capabilities in the Houston area just got an $8 million boost.

On Wednesday, May 20, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) awarded $8 million in grants to institutions in Houston and Bryan for the creation or expansion of so-called “core” cancer research facilities.

“Core facilities provide shared access to advanced technology, equipment, and scientific expertise that may not be available at every institution,” CPRIT says. “These core facilities are vital to not only cancer research but also to the study of diseases beyond cancer.”

Houston-area recipients of these $2 million grants are:

  • A facility at the University of Texas Health Science Center for preclinical support of cancer researchers in Texas to evaluate new safe, effective drugs and drug combinations.
  • The Accelerator for Cancer Therapeutics, operated by Houston’s Texas Medical Center Foundation. The accelerator helps researchers and startups move innovative cancer treatments from the lab to clinical trials.
  • Rice University’s Genetic Design & Engineering Center in Houston. The center enables researchers to collaborate on studies of custom DNA for cancer treatment.
  • A facility at the Texas A&M University System’s Health Science Center in Bryan that aims to speed up the development of cancer therapies.

In addition to those grants, the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Methodist Hospital Research Institute, Baylor College of Medicine, and Rice University shared $21 million to recruit cancer researchers from other institutions.

The largest of those grants—totalling $4 million—went to M.D. Anderson for the recruitment of renowned cancer researcher Andre Nussenzweig from the National Institutes of Health. His research focuses on how DNA damage and faulty DNA repairs lead to cancer.

Here are the totals for the other CPRIT grants awarded in the Houston area:

  • $12.8 million to Houston-based Indapta Therapeutics for the development of an off-the-shelf therapy that naturally kills cancer cells, combined with an immunity-targeting agent for a type of leukemia.
  • $11.1 million to MD Anderson, including $5 million for a statewide platform to improve long-term health outcomes in adolescents and young adults who survived cancer.
  • $8.4 million to Baylor College of Medicine, including $4.8 million for two training programs for cancer researchers.
  • $6.25 million to UT Health Houston, including $4 million for a biomedical informatics and genomics training program for cancer researchers.
  • $4.4 million to the Texas A&M Health Science Center’s Houston campus, including $2.4 million for a cancer therapeutics training program.
  • $2.75 million to Rice, including $250,000 for a study of ovarian cancer.
  • $2 million to Houston-based March Biosciences for the development of a targeted therapy for treating T-cell lymphoma.
  • $1.15 million to the University of Houston, including $900,000 for a platform for detection of lung cancer.
  • $900,000 to Texas A&M in Bryan to conduct clinical drug trials in rural and underserved communities around the state.
  • $800,000 to Houston- and Israel-based Xerient Pharma for the development of an oral form of a cell-protecting drug called amifostine to protect the upper GI tract from radiation damage during pancreatic cancer treatment.
  • $659,000 to Missouri City-based OmniNano Pharmaceuticals for the development of a two-drug combination to treat the most common form of pancreatic cancer.
  • $250,000 to the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston for a novel therapeutic to prevent colitis-related colorectal cancer.
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