Exclusive: New digital platform goes live to help connect the Houston innovation ecosystem

Introducing HTX TechList

The HTX TechList — launching August 13 — will help connect the dots in Houston's sprawled and burgeoning innovation ecosystem. Getty Images

With a city as diverse and sprawling as Houston, the local innovation ecosystem could stand to benefit from a platform that connects all the dots virtually. So, that's exactly what Houston Exponential created.

HX — a nonprofit dedicated to promoting innovation in Houston — is launching HTX TechList August 13, and the platform will consist of profiles for startups, investors, startup development organizations, and corporations and will act as both a database as well as a forum for innovators to interact.

"The problem we've been solving for such a long time has been [not having] dependable data that you can rely on," says Serafina Lalany, chief of staff at HX. "We're taking responsibility for the curation for it and the quality assurance of it."

The fact of the matter is there's no one source for data and information on startups in Houston. While platforms like Crunchbase and Pitch Book exist — and the HTX TechList will factor in their data — they can have costly memberships and be far from complete, since they only represent venture capital-backed startups.

"For the first time ever, you're pulling up a startup page and you're seeing all their fundraising history, the SDOs they're a part of, a blurb of what they're working on, and, the thing I'm most excited about is, their tags," Lalany says, adding that there's over 2,000 tags. "It makes the whole thing super searchable."

Lalany emphasizes that accuracy is HX's goal, and the organization has a data team to help to ensure validity. After launch, the emphasis will be on calling Houston innovators to create accounts for themselves and their companies. HX's next hire will likely be for a marketing person, Lalany mentions.

The technology has been white labeled from Israel's Startup Nation Central, which launched Israel Startup Finder in 2017.

"Israel, a couple years ago, was also an emerging ecosystem," says Lalany, explaining that the country wanted to work toward global attention. Meanwhile, she continues, "Houston has access to global markets, but there's been an misconception that innovation wasn't happening here."

The HX team has been working with Startup Nation Central for a while and been training on the platform since January, which has included a buildout of 300 profiles for the site. The TechList will launch on August 13 with a free virtual event featuring Mayor Sylvester Turner, Israel's Startup Finder team, and several. Houston innovators. (Note: InnovationMap is a media partner for the event.)

"When we were thinking about the launch event and just the sheer number of virtual events that happen now, we wanted to be sure that whatever we produce is of absolute value to our audience — the founders," Lalany says.

The event, which has registration open online, will feature breakout rooms focused on topics that are important to Houston founders:

  • Early stage investment
  • Building your team
  • How to pitch to the press
  • Landing an enterprise customer
  • Opportunity in Houston
  • Resources for founders of color

While the idea for the platform has been considered for years at HX — even in its early days, the need for the HTX TechList has been enhanced in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, Lalany says.

"The world changed in March, and our mission has become realized even more profoundly than before. Our mission has always been to help connect the dots in Houston — it's such a large city, and outsiders are always overwhelmed," she says. "Once we went digital, we were able to do 10 times as much of the curation function that we did pre-pandemic. It's increased a lot of our efficiency."

One-stop shop

Screenshot courtesy of HX

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Houston unicorn closes $421M to fuel first phase of flagship energy project

Heating Up

Houston geothermal unicorn Fervo Energy has closed $421 million in non-recourse debt financing for the first phase of its flagship Cape Station project in Beaver County, Utah.

Fervo believes Cape Station can meet the needs of surging power demand from data centers, domestic manufacturing and an energy market aiming to use clean and reliable power. According to the company, Cape Station will begin delivering its first power to the grid this year and is expected to reach approximately 100 megwatts of operating capacity by early 2027. Fervo added that it plans to scale to 500 megawatts.

The $421 million financing package includes a $309 million construction-to-term loan, a $61 million tax credit bridge loan, and a $51 million letter of credit facility. The facilities will fund the remaining construction costs for the first phase of Cape Station, and will also support the project’s counterparty credit support requirements.

Coordinating lead arrangers include Barclays, BBVA, HSBC, MUFG, RBC and Société Générale, with additional participation from Bank of America, J.P. Morgan and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank, Limited, New York Branch.

“As demand for firm, clean, affordable power accelerates, EGS (Enhanced Geothermal Systems) is set to become a core energy asset class for infrastructure lenders,” Sean Pollock, managing director, project Finance at RBC Capital Markets, said in a news release. “Fervo is pioneering this step change with Cape Station, a vital contribution to American energy security that RBC is proud to support.”

The oversubscribed financing marks Cape Station’s shift from early-stage and bridge funding to a long-term, non-recourse capital structure, according to the news release.

“Non-recourse financing has historically been considered out of reach for first-of-a-kind projects,” David Ulrey, CFO of Fervo Energy, said in a news release. “Cape Station disrupts that narrative. With proven oil and gas technology paired with AI-enabled drilling and exploration, robust commercial offtake, operational consistency, and an unrelenting focus on health and safety, we have shown that EGS is a highly bankable asset class.”

Fervo continues to be one of the top-funded startups in the Houston area. The company has raised about $1.5 billion prior to the latest $421 million. It also closed a $462 million Series E in December.

According to Axios Pro, Fervo filed for an IPO that would value the company between $2 billion and $3 billion in January.

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This article first appeared on EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

Houston food giant Sysco to acquire competitor in $29 billion deal

Mergers & Acquisitions

Sysco, the nation's largest food distributor, will acquire supplier Restaurant Depot in a deal worth more than $29 billion.

The acquisition would create a closer link between Sysco and its customers that right now turn to Restaurant Depot for supplies needed quickly in an industry segment known as “cash-and-carry wholesale.”

Sysco, based in Houston, serves more than 700,000 restaurants, hospitals, schools, and hotels, supplying them with everything from butter and eggs to napkins. Those goods are typically acquired ahead of time based on how much traffic that restaurants typically see.

Restaurant Depot offers memberships to mom-and-pop restaurants and other businesses, giving them access to warehouses stocked with supplies for when they run short of what they've purchased from suppliers like Sysco.

It is a fast growing and high-margin segment that will likely mean thousands of restaurants will rely increasingly on Sysco for day-to-day needs.

Restaurant Depot shareholders will receive $21.6 billion in cash and 91.5 million Sysco shares. Based on Sysco’s closing share price of $81.80 as of March 27, 2026, the deal has an enterprise value of about $29.1 billion.

Restaurant Depot was founded in Brooklyn in 1976. The family-run business then known as Jetro Restaurant Depot, has become the nation's largest cash-and-carry wholesaler.

The boards of both companies have approved the acquisition, but it would still need regulatory approval.

Shares of Sysco Corp. tumbled 13% Monday to $71.26, an initial decline some industry analysts expected given the cost of the deal.

Houston researcher builds radar to make self-driving cars safer

eyes on the road

A Rice University researcher is giving autonomous vehicles an “extra set of eyes.”

Current autonomous vehicles (AVs) can have an incomplete view of their surroundings, and challenges like pedestrian movement, low-light conditions and adverse weather only compound these visibility limitations.

Kun Woo Cho, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Rice professor of electrical and computer engineering Ashutosh Sabharwal, has developed EyeDAR to help address such issues and enhance the vehicles’ sensing accuracy. Her research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation.

The EyeDAR is an orange-sized, low-power, millimeter-wave radar that could be placed at streetlights and intersections. Its design was inspired by that of the human eye. Researchers envision that the low-cost sensors could help ensure that AVs always pick up on emergent obstacles, even when the vehicles are not within proper range for their onboard sensors and when visibility is limited.

“Current automotive sensor systems like cameras and lidar struggle with poor visibility such as you would encounter due to rain or fog or in low-lighting conditions,” Cho said in a news release. “Radar, on the other hand, operates reliably in all weather and lighting conditions and can even see through obstacles.”

Signals from a typical radar system scatter when they encounter an obstacle. Some of the signal is reflected back to the source, but most of it is often lost. In the case of AVs, this means that "pedestrians emerging from behind large vehicles, cars creeping forward at intersections or cyclists approaching at odd angles can easily go unnoticed," according to Rice.

EyeDAR, however, works to capture lost radar reflections, determine their direction and report them back to the AV in a sequence of 0s and 1s.

“Like blinking Morse code,” Cho added. “EyeDAR is a talking sensor⎯it is a first instance of integrating radar sensing and communication functionality in a single design.”

After testing, EyeDAR was able to resolve target directions 200 times faster than conventional radar designs.

While EyeDAR currently targets risks associated with AVs, particularly in high-traffic urban areas, researchers also believe the technology behind it could complement artificial intelligence efforts and be integrated into robots, drones and wearable platforms.

“EyeDAR is an example of what I like to call ‘analog computing,’” Cho added in the release. “Over the past two decades, people have been focusing on the digital and software side of computation, and the analog, hardware side has been lagging behind. I want to explore this overlooked analog design space.”

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