3 Houston innovators to know this week

Who's Who

From a former astronaut to growing software company leaders, here are three innovators to know. Courtesy photos

This week's set of innovators to know are familiar with pivoting careers. All three had successful careers — from energy finance to space exploration — before jumping into a new field. And each set of prior experience prepared them for what they are doing today.

Alex Colosivschi, founder and CEO of Currux

Courtesy of Currux

Alex Colosivschi had a successful career in energy finance before he started his company, Currux. He was walking in his Rice Village neighborhood when the idea came to him. He realized that despite the green surroundings, he was choked by the smell of engine exhaust.

"I started with thinking about the future of energy and how the industry will adapt to a world of electric, autonomous and shared mobility, and the need to reduce CO2 emissions," he says.

Tim Kopra, partner at Blue Bear Capital

Courtesy of Blue Bear Capital

It might not be easy to connect the dots between Tim Kopra's NASA career and his current role at Blue Bear Capital, but for Kopra, it makes perfect sense.

"On face value, it may sound like an odd match, taking someone with a tech and operational background and putting them in venture, but quite frankly it feels very familiar to me because my career has really been focused on working on complex technology and operations with very small teams," Kopra says. "It's not just a theoretical understanding of the technology, but understanding how to use the technology and how it works."

Stuart Morstead, co-founder and COO of Arundo Analytics

Courtesy of Arundo Analytics

Stuart Morstead spent the bulk of his career in consulting, so he knows the importance of understanding the needs an industry has. He co-founded Arundo Analytics to address the analytical needs energy companies have on a regular basis.

Morstead says that most industrial companies that encounter issues with operations such as equipment maintenance "lack the data science and software capabilities to drive value from insights into their daily operations."

Arundo is growing — both from a funding standpoint as well as through its staff. The Houston company has big plans for its 2019.

It might not be surprising to discover that the energy capital of the world is a hub for energy startups. Getty Images

5 emerging energy tech companies in Houston revolutionizing the industry

The Future is Now

If you thought Houston's wildcatter days were exciting, just you wait. Houston has an emerging ecosystem of tech startups across industries — from facial recognition devices used at event check in to a drone controller that mimics movement in space.

A somewhat obvious space for Houston entrepreneurs is oil and gas. While the energy industry might have a reputation of being slow to adapt new technologies, these five Houston startups are developing the future of the industry — one device at a time.

Future Sight AR

Lori-Lee Emshey's Future Sight AR is revolutionizing antiquated construction tools using augmented reality. Courtesy of Future Sight AR

Working on an oil and gas construction site is like constructing a really large puzzle — one that, if constructed incorrectly, could have dangerous and costly consequences. On her first job in the industry, Lori-Lee Emshey was required to move through the site with a pen and a clipboard to mark down any issues or problems, only to later log that information into a computer. It was a slow process, and she felt frustrated by that.

"I was really shocked at how much work they were doing with such little technology," Emshey says. "I thought, 'there's so much room for innovation here.'"

She created Future Sight AR that uses artificial reality technologies on a smart device so that technicians can instantly see instructions and solutions for the hardware they are constructing on the site. Read more about Future Sight AR here.

Nesh

Nesh's digital assistant technology wants to make industry information more easily accessible for energy professionals. Photo courtesy of Thomas Miller/Breitling Energy

Access to information is endless in the digital age, but Sidd Gupta wanted to create a digital assistant that specifically focused on the energy industry. Nesh is an information bot that users can chat questions to. Think: Siri or Alexa, but with an engineering degree.

"We created Nesh as something super-simple to use," Gupta says. "There's no learning curve, no technical knowledge required, you just need to speak plain English."

Nesh has the potential to change productivity and hiring requirements in various energy companies. Read more about Nesh here.

Cemvita Factory

The Karimi siblings have created a way to synthetically convert CO2 into glucose, and they are targeting the energy and aerospace industries for their technology. Courtesy of Cemvita Factory

Energy companies are getting more and more pressure to create a sustainable solution for the carbon dioxide refineries produce on a daily basis. Houston-based Cemvita Factory has a solution. The company has a patented technology that can convert CO2 into glucose — just like plants do in the photosynthesis process.

"We go to these companies and say, 'What do you want to convert CO2 into?,'" Moji Karimi, co-founder of Cemvita, says. "Then, we do a quick pilot in six months in our lab, and we show them the metrics. They decide if they want to scale it up."

The company also has big plans for making an impact on the aerospace industry too. Read more about Cemvita here.

NatGasHub.com

Jay Bhatty looked at how pipeline data reached traders and thought of a better way. Getty Images

Information around natural gas pipelines — such as whether a pipeline has capacity issues that could trigger a spike in prices — has, for years, been scattered across the web. Now, Houston-based NatGasHub.com aggregates pipeline data from dozens upon dozens of websites.

Jay Bhatty, a veteran of the natural-gas-trading business, founded the Houston-based NatGasHub.com platform, which runs on cloud-based software, launched in late 2017. The company is already profitable and hasn't taken any outside funding. Read more about NatGasHub.com here.

Arundo Analytics

This growing Houston company is providing industrial industries with smart analytics. Courtesy of Arundo

While information can be slow and siloed between energy companies, energy professionals come across the same problem within their own organization. Arundo Analytics is developing software to help connect the dots within an energy company's operations.

Stuart Morstead, co-founder and chief operating officer of Arundo, says that most industrial companies that encounter issues with operations such as equipment maintenance "lack the data science and software capabilities to drive value from insights into their daily operations." Read more about Arundo Analytics here.

This growing Houston company is providing industrial industries with smart analytics. Getty Images

Houston software company looks to grow its workforce internationally

Staffing up

A Houston-based analytics-focused company is gearing up for growth in 2019 and plans to staff up its headquarters and remote offices abroad.

Arundo Analytics Inc. brings industrial companies — which sometimes are slow to adopt brand-new technology — into the world of machine learning and advanced analytics to help boost revenue, cut costs and reduce risks.

The startup's enterprise software gives asset-heavy industrial businesses "a virtual window into their day-to-day operations," says Stuart Morstead, co-founder and chief operating officer of Arundo. Among the operations that benefit from software are equipment maintenance, safety, logistics and scheduling.

Morstead points out that most industrial companies that encounter issues with operations such as equipment maintenance "lack the data science and software capabilities to drive value from insights into their daily operations."

Arundo aims to solve that problem by incorporating machine learning and advanced analytics — the kind of innovations emanating from the likes of Amazon, Google, and IBM — into everyday business operations at industrial companies, says Morstead, a former partner at consulting firm McKinsey & Co. and a graduate of Rice University.

Aside from its broad enterprise software, Arundo supplies out-of-the-box applications that tackle individual industrial challenges like flow metering for the offshore oil and gas industry and monitoring the condition of equipment. The virtual cloud-based multiphase flow meter is sold as part of a software package from industrial technology giant ABB.

More than 50 of Arundo's estimated 110 employees work on that technology from the startup's headquarters in downtown Houston. To propel its growth, Arundo plans to add employees this year in Houston as well as its other offices in Canada, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom, according to Morstead.

In 2016, Arundo graduated from Stanford University's StartX accelerator program. A year later, Arundo was named to the MIT STEX25 accelerator program by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Startup Exchange.

Since its founding in 2015, Arundo has raised more $35 million in capital, including a Series A round of $28 million that closed in the first half of 2018. Investors include Sundt AS, Stokke Industri, Horizon, Canica, Strømstangen, Arctic Fund Management, Stanford-StartX Fund and Northgate Partners.

Aside from drawing more funding in 2018, the startup set up several strategic partnerships designed to increase the adoption of Arundo's software in sectors such as oil and gas, manufacturing, shipping, construction and maritime. Among the new partners are Dell Technologies, DNV GL's Veracity platform and WorleyParsons.

Going forward, Morstead says Arundo aims to bring its software expertise, business prowess and "world-class data science" to even more industrial companies and their physical assets as part of the global Industrial Internet of Things sector. That market is projected to approach $1 trillion by 2025, up from $100 billion in 2016.

To be sure, Arundo is competing in a market that's rife with opportunity. Consulting firm Accenture estimates the IIoT market could add $14.2 trillion to the global economy by 2030.

"Arguably the biggest driver of productivity and growth in the next decade, the Industrial Internet of Things will accelerate the reinvention of sectors that account for almost two-thirds of world output," the Accenture report says.

Tor Jakob Ramsøy, founder and CEO of Arundo, certainly grasps the enormous potential of IIoT.

"Asset-heavy companies can no longer afford to make business decisions based on an incomplete view of their organization," Ramsøy, a former McKinsey partner, said in a 2018 news release. "By combining deep data and [artificial intelligence] knowledge with decades of cumulative experience in enterprise consulting, Arundo is ushering in a new era in IIoT."

Tracking performance

Courtesy of Arundo

Arundo's Condition & Performance Monitoring Software can easily be plugged into a company's system and track its equipment using cloud technology.

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Houston company partners on AI-powered medical support for space missions

AI in space

Houston-based Aexa Aerospace has partnered with SpacePort Australia (SPA) to build medical AI solutions for space crews.

Known as The Hamilton Project, the collaboration aims to complete the training and refinement of a “deductive medical AI model” designed to aid and treat astronauts and space travellers. With limited to no real-time access to doctors on Earth during space missions, the project's goal is to create an AI model that would serve as a medical resource.

“‘The Hamilton Project’ is a sophisticated AI model, integrating academic and clinical knowledge in a unique way,” Aexa founder and CEO Feranando De La Peña Llaca said in a news release. “It is paving the way for future autonomous attending.”

The project is named after NASA flight surgeon Dr. Douglas Hamilton, who participated in 50 missions.

SPA, an independent research organization, will bring its practical medical knowledge and clinical experience to The Hamilton Project, which builds on Australia’s rural and remote medical training programs. SPA founder Dr. Gabrielle Caswell brings 20 years of remote medicine experience that SPA believes will help address the issues that could be encountered in space.

“Rural general practitioners in Australia practice ‘pre-cradle to grave’ medicine, including areas considered sub-specialities in most western countries: OBYN, paediatrics, trauma management, anaesthetics, general surgery, mental health and geriatrics,” Caswell added in the release. “This broad clinical skill set encompasses all stages and phases of human life. And importantly practitioners are also trained in the management of severe trauma. "It is anticipated that doctors and medical staff will become embedded into missions, and all these skills will be required over time, to create successful space economic zones.”

Aexa Aerospace’s previous work includes developing holographic medical devices that have been trialled on the International Space Station. Read more here.

Houston residents rank economy as biggest problem, new Kinder survey shows

by the numbers

The region’s economy tops the list of concerns of Houston-area residents surveyed by Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research.

Respondents in the Kinder Houston Area Survey, which questioned nearly 9,000 residents of Harris, Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, cite the regional economy as the area’s “biggest problem.”

Shrinking confidence in job opportunities and growing household financial pressures fueled the grim economic outlook:

  • The share of residents rating job prospects as “good” or “excellent” fell by more than 25 percentage points, the sharpest single-year decline since the 1980s.
  • Seventy-nine percent of those earning less than $25,000 said they’d be unable to cover an unplanned $400 expense. That was up from 72 percent last year. In the $50,000-to-$99,999 category, the figure was 39 percent, up from 30 percent last year.
  • More than 20 percent of residents said their financial status was worse than it was 12 months earlier.

“These challenges were particularly notable among lower- and middle-earning households,” according to a report about the survey.

Dan Potter, co-director of the institute’s Houston Population Research Center, says the annual survey “provides community leaders and the public with a map of where we’ve been on key issues, where we are now, and what’s of looming importance. It allows everyone to work together toward a better future for our city and our region.”

Houston-based Oxy officially announces CEO transition, names successor

Team Transition

Houston-based Occidental (Oxy) has officially announced its longtime CEO's retirement and her successor.

Oxy shared that Vicki Hollub will retire June 1. Reuters first reported Hollub's plan to retire in March, but a firm date had not been set. Hollub will remain on Oxy's board of directors.

Richard Jackson, who currently serves as Oxy's COO, will replace Hollub in the CEO role.

“It has been a privilege to lead Occidental and work alongside such a talented team for more than 40 years," Hollub shared in a news release. "Following the recently completed decade-long transformation of the company, we now have the best portfolio and the best technical expertise in Occidental’s history. With this strong foundation in place, a clear path forward and a leader like Richard, who has the experience and vision to elevate Occidental, now is the right time for this transition. “I look forward to supporting Richard and the Board through my continued role as a director.”

Hollub has held the top leadership position at Oxy since 2016 and has been with the energy giant for more than 40 years. Before being named CEO, she served as COO and senior executive vice president at the company. She led strategic acquisitions of Anadarko Petroleum in 2019 and CrownRock in 2024, and was the first woman selected to lead a major U.S. oil and gas company.

Hollub also played a key role in leading Oxy's future as a "carbon management company."

Jackson has been with Oxy since 2003. He has held numerous leadership positions, including president of U.S. onshore oil and gas, president of low carbon integrated technologies, general manager of the Permian Delaware Basin and enhanced oil recovery oil and gas, vice president of investor relations, and vice president of drilling Americas.

He was instrumental in launching Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, which focuses DAC, carbon sequestration and low-carbon fuels through businesses like 1PointFive, TerraLithium and others, according to the company. He also serves on the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative’s Climate Investment Board and the American Petroleum Institute’s Upstream Committee. He holds a bachelor's degree in petroleum engineering from Texas A&M University.

Jackson was named COO of Oxy in October 2025. In his new role as CEO, he will also join the board of directors, effective June 1.

“I am grateful to be appointed President and CEO of Occidental and excited about the opportunity to execute from the strong position and capabilities that we built under Vicki’s leadership,” Jackson added in the release. “It means a lot to me personally to be a part of our Occidental team. I am committed to delivering value from our significant and high-quality resource base. We have a tremendous opportunity to focus on organic improvement and execution to deliver meaningful value for our employees, shareholders and partners.”

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This article first appeared on EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

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