Houston SaaS startup raises $10M to keep up with customer growth

money moves

Houston-based Liongard has fresh funding to work with. Photo via Getty Images

A Houston software company has announced its latest funding.

Liongard, an IT software provider, has raised an additional $10 million led by Updata Partners with contribution from TDF Ventures — both existing investors in the company. The funding, according to a news release, will go toward providing the best customer service for Liongard's growing customer base.

The technology is providing managed service providers, or MSPs, improved visibility across the IT stack and an optimized user experience.

“Since working with our first MSP partners, we’ve seen time and again the power of visibility into IT data, reducing the time they spend researching customer issues and allowing them to respond faster than their peers,” says Joe Alapat, CEO and co-founder of Liongard, in the release. “This investment enables us to continue to achieve our vision of delivering visibility into each element of the IT stack.”

The company has about 2,000 partners in support of more than 60,000 end customers. And has been recognized as a top employer by Forbes and Inc. magazine earlier this year.

“We are excited to deepen our commitment with Liongard,“ says Carter Griffin, general partner at Updata, in the release. “With its leading data platform for MSPs we expect continued fast-paced growth.”

Liongard's last funding round was in May of 2020 and was a $17 million series B round. Both Updata Partners and TDF ventures were involved in that round. The company's total funding now sits at over $30 million.

Buildforce is an app that can connect contractors with construction experts. Photo courtesy of Buildforce

Houston construction tech company raises $4M round

money moves

A locally founded company that's focusing on changing the construction labor game has raised a round of institutional funding.

Buildforce, which splits its headquarters between Houston and Austin, closed its latest round of funding at $4 million. The round was led by Maryland-based TDF Ventures, with participation from existing investor Houston-based Mercury Fund and Austin-based S3 Ventures.

The company uses construction staffing and management software to more efficiently connect contractors to skilled workers across trades — electrical, mechanical, plumbing, flooring, concrete, painting, and more.

"Contractors depend on skilled and reliable tradespeople to meet project timelines," says Moody Heard, co-founder and CEO of Buildforce, in a news release. "Our key insight is that by optimizing the user experience for skilled tradespeople seeking higher pay and job security, we are able to help meet contractors' needs. We're thrilled to have become the partner of choice for the top contractors in our current markets looking to connect with this workforce."

The new funds will support the startup as it scales, grows revenue, develops its product, and more.

"The US has millions of unfilled openings for skilled tradespeople, yet consistent work remains out-of-reach for many construction professionals," says Will Rayner, principal at TDF Ventures, in the release. "Buildforce's exponential growth in 2021 is a testament to the company's ability to connect supply and demand in this difficult labor market at scale."

The company closed an earlier round of funding in April. That round was led by Mercury.

Houston-based Liongard has fresh funds thanks to a $4.5 million round. Getty Images

Houston SaaS startup closes $4.5 million Series A round of funding

Must be the money

A Houston startup has something to roar about. Information Technology automation and management company, Liongard, has closed its latest round of funding at $4.5 million.

The Series A round was lead by TDF Ventures, a software, infrastructure and services fund that has a presence in Washington D.C. and Silicon Valley. Currently, the fund is investing from its $150M Fund IV. Other Liongard investors include ‎Integr8d Capital, Gestalt Theory Venture Partners, Richard Yoo (the Founder of Rackspace Managed Hosting), and others.

The fresh funds will allow for the company to ramp up the development of its Roar platform — a software product that creates a single dashboard for all data systems including the Cloud and apps, server networks, and on-site systems to make accessing and protecting the data easier. The funds will also go toward improving and expanding account management capabilities.

"This investment will help us accelerate development and integrations to create additional visibility across the varied technology stacks that MSPs [or, managed service provider] support," says Joe Alapat, CEO of Liongard, in a release. "Our true goal is to support MSPs across the entire client journey — automating onboarding, documentation, and insight that speeds up issue resolution — unleashing teams to operate at 10X."

The SaaS company has grown its clientbase since its 2015 launch. In spring of 2018, Liongard closed its Seed Stage round of its capital campaign at $1.3 million in investments. With these initial funds, Liongard was able to put Roar on the market in April 2018 and expand its client base — growing from two clients to now close to 200 customers in less than a year.

"Liongard is in a strategic and unique position to disrupt the way MSPs operate and manage IT for their clients," says Jim Pastoriza, managing partner of TDF Ventures, in a release. "We're looking forward to a partnership with a great team building a product that will revolutionize the MSP industry."

Alapat, who runs his company out of Station Houston, told InnovationMap in March that he had a goal for the round to raise between $3 million and $4 million, and said he thinks the company has been received well by Houston investors because Liongard offers a product that other IT management companies don't.

"No one has a unified way to look across the Cloud and network and apps and services and servers," Alapat

says. "There's plenty of different dashboards and solutions that looks at one or two of those things, but there's no single solution that consolidates all of that. That's what makes us different — that we unify all of that under one umbrella."

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Q&A: TIME100 AI honoree Angle Bush on building Houston’s artificial intelligence future

AI builder

Angle Bush, founder and CEO of Black Women in Artificial Intelligence, has a running question for her organization's members: Are you in the lab?

For Bush, inquiry isn’t philosophical. Learning about artificial intelligence is one thing. But building with it? Developing products, solving problems and creating a stake in the emerging AI economy? That’s another thing entirely—and exactly the point.

Bush’s own path into AI began in 2019 with an unlikely project: a robot named Usher, designed to bring her hot cocoa. She went down what she calls “YouTube University” to figure out how to build it and kept encountering another subject: artificial intelligence. Her curiosity eventually led her to a Houston AI event, where she noticed something missing.

She didn’t see a full reflection of herself, prompting a bigger question: If AI was becoming a transformative force, who would have a role in shaping it? Her answer became the premise for what came next: There couldn’t be an AI revolution without Black women.

Bush never finished Usher. Instead, she built Black Women in Artificial Intelligence, which has grown into a global organization with members across five continents.

Six years after launching BWIAI, the Houston founder was named to the 2026 TIME100 AI, TIME’s annual list recognizing 100 of the world’s most influential people in artificial intelligence.

The recognition is significant, but Bush is focused on what comes next: moving people beyond AI literacy and adoption and into creation—turning ideas into deployed products, building economic opportunity and ensuring more people have a hand in shaping the technology.

That mission brings Bush back to Houston, where she sees an opportunity to build on the city’s entrepreneurial culture while advancing conversations around responsible and ethical AI.

InnovationMap spoke with Bush about her TIME100 AI recognition, her push to get more people building with AI, Houston’s role in the technology’s future and her simple message: Get in the lab.

InnovationMap: What accomplishment at BWIAI are you most proud of?

Angle Bush: This past March, 11 of our members designed and deployed products and services utilizing artificial intelligence. For me, that's what we want to do. We're looking for builders. I continually ask our members: Are you in the lab? What are you building?

We have members here in Houston who built a conference app designed to help people better understand and navigate the conference experience. We also have Shonda and Shalisha Witherspoon, The Digital Twins, who created a patent assistant to help individuals interested in creating a patent for their product or service.

For me, watching those women move dreams from notebooks to deployment is more important than anything else. Notebooks are designed to hold your dreams, but not keep your dreams.

For NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference, if you wanted to participate as part of the Black Women in AI delegation, you had to build something. You couldn't just give me a concept and say, “Hey, Angle, I'm building ABC.” No. I needed you to design it, build it and deploy it. That will continually be one of the things I'm most proud of.

IM: Why is building so important to you?

AB: I've been saying that from the beginning because I tell people all the time: I can talk all day. We can have this conversation all day. But at the end of the day, are we building? What is the result?

Conversation is great. It can provide insight. But we have to put our hands on products. We have to put our hands on the APIs. We have to put our hands on that knowledge and ask, What do we do with it?

After you learn it, what are you doing with it? Are you going to create an app that helps your family? Are you creating an app that allows you to be part of the AI economy in a way that you can control? We're all going to be part of the AI economy at some point based on our careers and everything else. But what part of it can you control?

IM: What's next for Black Women in Artificial Intelligence?

AB: I want to continue our mission to educate, engage, embrace and empower Black women in AI. I want our organization to serve as an opportunity for women to build. How do we build? How do we understand how to build? How do we move beyond how we've been conditioned and start asking questions—not only of ourselves, but also the right questions of corporations?

Long term, I want us to continue building, and then I want us to pass that knowledge and insight down to the next generation. But I also want us to reach back to generations that may not have had this opportunity when they were younger. Maybe they were discouraged from going into STEM when they were younger. I want them to know that you can still build. It doesn't matter what your age is. It doesn't matter what college or university you attended. If you have an idea, we want to democratize AI so that you can build.

IM: BWIAI's story began in Houston. What role do you think Houston can play in the AI boom?

AB: First, I absolutely love Houston. I'm originally from Chicago and was raised in Saginaw, Michigan. But as they say, I got to Houston as quickly as I could. I think Houston has a great opportunity to position itself as a center of excellence for innovation. We have an entrepreneurial spirit and drive that I believe is unmatched.

And as much as we have entrepreneurs, we also have advocates who want to see the ethical use of AI. I think we'll see a rise in entrepreneurship. Houston is already building that ecosystem with the Ion and other entities coming into the fold.

As far as the mark Black Women in Artificial Intelligence will make in Houston, I think we'll bring a different perspective to the city's AI ecosystem. We'll make an impact on the entrepreneurial side, but also on the advocacy side when it comes to the responsible and ethical use of AI, which isn't always talked about.

IM: One of the biggest concerns surrounding AI is its potential to displace workers faster than people can acquire new skills. How should we be thinking about that?

AB: In full transparency, that's a tough question to answer because AI is moving so quickly. There are so many different models and so many different things happening that it can appear as though they're coming out of thin air.

For me, it's a matter of how we work with individuals so they can think more about the system than the model, because the models can retire. The impact this is going to have on communities globally is going to be an interesting dynamic. With the work we're doing at Black Women in Artificial Intelligence, this is our mitigation system: How can we bring individuals along so they can learn artificial intelligence and understand that there is a pivot—and it's not coming. It's happening right now, live.

How can we create an ecosystem where individuals get the training, support and understanding they need? For me, that's how we mitigate it: by creating a space where individuals can learn how to pivot.

IM: If readers take one thing away from this conversation, what do you want it to be?

AB: How important it is to be in the lab. It is important to start building today—not tomorrow, not next week, not next month. We have to be in the lab today. That's it.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

UTMB launches new department for space medicine, names inaugural leader

department launch

In space, no one can hear you scream—but they can hear you discuss your medical history and recent symptoms.

The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) announced last month that it would form a new Department of Aerospace and Exploration Medicine within its School of Public and Population Health under the leadership of Dr. Ronak V. Shah, who will serve as inaugural chair.

“Human exploration is changing rapidly, and the health challenges associated with distance, isolation, and limited resources are changing along with it,” Shah said in a news release. “Creating the Department of Aerospace and Exploration Medicine gives us an opportunity to build on decades of expertise at UTMB as we prepare for the future.”

The new department elevates UTMB’s existing Aerospace Medicine Division and provides "broader academic structure for expanding research, education, and collaboration across disciplines," according to the release. Shah was previously named director of the division in 2022 after serving as medical director of Johnson Space Center.

Space exploration in particular has a wide variety of highly specific medical side effects that are in need of the formalized study that the department will specialize in. For example, zero- and low-gravity environments cause everything from detached fingernails to flattened eyeballs. Even in modern, high-tech spacecraft, the human body feels the impacts of space.

It’s an area of medicine UTMB is uniquely suited for. Starting in the 1950s with NASA’s director of medical research Dr. Charles A. Berry, UTMB partnered with the blossoming era of exploration by monitoring astronauts. In 1993, UTMB and the NASA Johnson Space Center created the joint Aerospace Medicine Residency Program, which used bed facilities at the Galveston branch to simulate weightlessness. Wherever there has been a question about how flight and space affect health, odds are UTMB has been involved.

The Department of Aerospace and Exploration Medicine will launch several new initiatives soon. One planned for 2027 is an Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine Fellowship that will allow scientists to study the physiology of high-pressure flight.

“In the era of a growing global space economy, we are revisiting questions such as who is flying, what is their destination, what vehicle will get them there?” Shah added in the release. “The answers to these questions will drive what research is needed and how we train the next generation.”

Energy AI company opens first U.S. office at Houston's the Ion

new to hou

Building on its partnership with Houston-based oilfield services provider Halliburton, energy-sector AI company Shape Digital recently opened an office at The Ion. It’s the company’s first U.S. location.

Shape Digital’s workforce in Houston includes employees specializing in tech support, business development and client services. The company’s local hiring projections and headcount weren’t available. The new office will be located within Industrious at the Ion, according to Rice Alliance.

A key driver of the new Houston office: The company forecasts North America will account for more than 20 percent of its business in 2027.

“North America is a critical market for industrial innovation, and Houston sits at the center of companies driving that progress,” Caio Sene, vice president of client services at Shape Digital, said in a release. “Growing our presence here allows us to work alongside operators as they look for practical ways to turn existing operational data into clear recommendations for what to do next.”

Shape Digital, which also has offices in Singapore and Brazil, develops decision-making platforms for the oil and gas sector.

The Ion District office gives Shape Digital a presence close to Halliburton’s headquarters. In May, the two companies forged a partnership to combine Halliburton’s Digital Field Solverdecision-making system with Shape Digital’s AI portfolio.

Shape Digital layers AI software atop existing operations data rather than replacing legacy systems or adding new software.

The company’s suite of AI agents draws on more than 200 operations-monitoring algorithms, continually learning from company and industry data. The suite comprises four products: Shape Aura, Shape Lighthouse, Shape Lumen and Shape Reef.

Shape Digital says that by working with a customer’s existing operations data, it can deliver ROI in less than two months without any additional investment in equipment or infrastructure.

The company is a 2021 spinoff of Japan-based Modec. Modec builds, owns, and operates floating offshore oil and gas production facilities. Its Modec America subsidiary is based in Houston.

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