3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Jessica Traver Ingram of IntuiTap, Kelsey Ruger of Hello Alice, Katy Rezvani of MD Anderson Cancer Center. Photos courtesy

Editor's note: Every week, I introduce you to three Houston innovators to know recently making headlines with news of innovative technology, investment activity, and more. This week's batch includes a podcast with a health tech founder, advice from an AI expert, and a cancer-fighting innovator.

Jessica Traver Ingram, CEO and co-founder of IntuiTap

Jessica Traver Ingram, CEO and co-founder of IntuiTap, joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to share her company's latest milestone. Photo courtesy of IntuiTap

Jessica Traver Ingram has been captivated by the intersection of physics and health care for most of her life, and that passion led her to contributing to the establishment of the Texas Medical Center's Biodesign Fellowship. After helping make the program a reality, Traver Ingram then participated in it as a fellow.

The program selects fellows and then lets them explore the TMC's member institutions to find ways to innovate within unmet clinical needs, and the inefficiency and challenges with placing epidurals and lumbar punctures caught Traver Ingram and her cohort's eye. The process relies completely on the health care practitioner's ability to feel the spine with their fingers to make the injection.

"We kept watching the inefficiencies of these procedures, and everyone was like, 'you're right, we don't really know why we do it this way,'" Traver Ingram says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "It's really cool to be outsiders watching and observing, because you just see things other people don't see — and that's in any industry."

With that, IntuiTap was born. Traver Ingram describes its tool, the VerTouch, as a "stud finder for the spine." After years of growing the company, she can also now call it FDA-approved. Read more.


Kelsey Ruger, chief technology and product officer for Hello Alice

AI's true potential lies in its ability to enhance human capabilities, not replace them. Photo courtesy

Ready or not, artificial intelligence is coming. In fact, it's already affecting the workforce.

"With its ability to automate tasks, analyze large amounts of data, and provide detailed insights, AI offers an enormous opportunity for businesses of all sizes," writes Kelsey Ruger, chief technology and product officer for Hello Alice, in a guest column. "However, realizing this potential requires a strategic approach that positions AI as a powerful partner, rather than a replacement for human ingenuity."

Ruger shares how business can unlock AI's full potential via automation, augmentation, and autonomy. Read more.

Katy Rezvani, professor of stem cell transplantation and cellular therapy at MD Anderson Cancer Center

At Rezvani Lab in MD Anderson Cancer Center, scientists train immune cells to fight cancer. Photo courtesy

San Diego-based Replay incorporated a first-in-class engineered TCR-NK cell therapy product company, Syena, using technology developed by Dr. Katy Rezvani at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The company has announced that its first patient has been dosed with an engineered T-Cell Receptor Natural Killer (TCR-NK) cell therapy for relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma.

Rezvani, a professor of stem cell transplantation and cellular therapy, is the force behind MD Anderson’s Rezvani Lab, a group of 55 people, all focused on harnessing natural killer cells to combat cancer.

“Everybody thinks that the immune system is fighting viruses and infections, but I feel our immune system is capable of recognizing and killing abnormal cells or cells that are becoming cancerous and they're very powerful. This whole field of immunotherapy really refers to the power of the immune system,” Rezvani tells InnovationMap. Read more.

Jessica Traver Ingram, CEO and co-founder of IntuiTap, joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to share her company's latest milestone. Photo courtesy of IntuiTap

With FDA approval, Houston health tech company prepares nationwide deployment

Houston innovators podcast episode 232

Jessica Traver Ingram has been captivated by the intersection of physics and health care for most of her life, and that passion led her to contributing to the establishment of the Texas Medical Center's Biodesign Fellowship. After helping make the program a reality, Traver Ingram then participated in it as a fellow.

The program selects fellows and then lets them explore the TMC's member institutions to find ways to innovate within unmet clinical needs, and the inefficiency and challenges with placing epidurals and lumbar punctures caught Traver Ingram and her cohort's eye. The process relies completely on the health care practitioner's ability to feel the spine with their fingers to make the injection.

"We kept watching the inefficiencies of these procedures, and everyone was like, 'you're right, we don't really know why we do it this way,'" Traver Ingram says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "It's really cool to be outsiders watching and observing, because you just see things other people don't see — and that's in any industry."

With that, IntuiTap was born. Traver Ingram describes its tool, the VerTouch, as a "stud finder for the spine." After years of growing the company, she can also now call it FDA-approved.


"FDA clearance allows us to market the device in the United States, so we are entering the commercial launch stage of the company, which is really exciting," Traver Ingram says. "We plan to have these devices available in hospitals across the country within the year."

First up is what Traver Ingram calls a soft launch. The company is picking five institutions that want to be centers of excellence for the device and doing trial launches there before entering into a greater, nationwide rollout.

"It's just crazy that what started as just an idea on paper is now FDA approved and commercially ready and something that patients can see in hospitals this year," Traver Ingram says.

And the timing is important, she explains, adding that where the health care industry seems to be at as a whole is primed for innovation like IntuiTap.

"There's a lot of really exciting developments happening in health care right now," Traver Ingram says. "I feel like we're really at a tipping point for innovation and we're going to see some really big leaps in the next couple of years.

"One of the exciting trends I think that we're seeing is a shift away from blind procedures or procedures that are seen as an art requiring a significant amount of skills toward more science-based, safer, consistent, and repeatable procedures," she continues. "We fit really well into that category, so I'm glad that we're seeing that shift."

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Fast-growing Houston real estate startup surges to No. 7 on Inc. 5000

growth report

Houston-based Epique Realty has ridden the AI wave to rank among the Inc. 5000’s 10 fastest-growing private companies.

With three-year revenue growth of 23,210 percent, the AI-powered real estate brokerage appears at No. 7 on this year’s Inc. 5000 list. The 2026 list ranks private companies based on percentage revenue growth from 2022 to 2025.

Epique, founded in 2021, also ranks as the No. 1 fastest-growing company in Houston, No. 1 fastest-growing real estate company in the U.S., and No. 2 fastest-growing company in Texas.

Epique’s annual revenue surpasses $91 million

Between 2022 and 2025, the company’s annual revenue skyrocketed from $391,654 to more than $91.2 million. In 2025, the brokerage closed more than 23,000 deals and surpassed $7 billion in total sales, elevating Epique to the country’s 14th-largest real estate brokerage as measured by volume.

Epique’s network has more than 4,000 agents.

“To debut in the top 10 of the Inc. 5000 is absolute proof that when you relentlessly put agents first, exponential growth takes care of itself,” co-founder and CEO Joshua Miller said in a news release.

“We didn’t achieve this by following the industry playbook; we achieved this by burning it,” Miller added. “By fully funding our agents’ success through free health care, proprietary AI, and world-class leads, we’ve built a company where agents can finally thrive.”

The company’s other co-founders are Chris Miller, chief operating officer and vice president of expansion, and Janice Delci, chief financial officer.

Epique expands business to Canada, Mexico, Australia

The Millers and Delci have guided the company’s rapid expansion.

“Scaling our corporate support team to match [our] hyper-growth while seamlessly expanding across all 50 states and internationally to Canada, Australia, and Mexico takes an incomparable operational infrastructure,” Miller said.

“We have built an enterprise-grade technology ecosystem that allows us to absorb overhead and empower our agents at lightning speed,” he added. “This ranking validates that our disruptive model is working, and it is completely redefining the global industry standard.”

Epique launched its platform in 2023, touting itself as the industry’s first AI-powered brokerage. The startup’s platform provides AI tools for real estate agents to improve their marketing, streamline content creation, and boost engagement with clients and prospects.

Among Epique’s AI tools are:

  • ChatGPT for generation of property descriptions
  • AI-assisted creation of blog posts and agents’ bios
  • Production of Instagram quotes for social media marketing

“When we started Epique, we wanted to build a company that genuinely cared for its agents’ financial and physical well-being,” Delci says. “To see that vision translate into this level of historic record-breaking growth is a beautiful testament to the true power of radical generosity.”

Epique and fellow honorees will be recognized Oct. 14-16 at the 2026 Inc. 5000 Conference & Gala in Dallas.

Six other Houston-area companies land in top 250

Here are the six other Houston-area companies that claimed spots in the top 250 on the Inc. 5000 list. Each company name is followed by its ranking, headquarters city, and three-year growth rate.

  • No. 27 Empact Technologies, 8,275 percent
  • No. 60 Action1, 4,512 percent
  • No 75 Signs By G, 3,684 percent
  • No. 79 The ’Pause Life, 3,469 percent (Galveston)
  • No. 110 Turtlebox Audio, 2,576 percent
  • No. 178 Dahnani Private Equity Group, 1,904 percent (Stafford)

How did companies in Texas’ other major metros fare?

Here’s a breakdown of companies in the Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, and San Antonio areas that made the top 250 on the Inc. 5000. Again, each company name is followed by its ranking, headquarters city, and three-year growth rate.

Austin (10 companies)

  • No. 9 Investment Watches, 15,741 percent
  • No. 72 Razor Metrics, 3,856 percent
  • No. 91 Autonomize AI, 2,921 percent
  • No. 102 Choose Your Horizon, 2,719 percent
  • No. 132 Wander Staffing, 2,296 percent
  • No. 144 Everyday Dose, 2,179 percent
  • No. 148 NetRise, 2,118 percent
  • No. 163 Nutrabound Labs, 1,999 percent (Bastrop)
  • No. 179 Steadily, 1,890 percent
  • No. 208 Tiny Health, 1,624 percent

Dallas-Fort Worth (11 companies)

  • No. 3 Yantran, 258,740 percent (Allen)
  • No. 12 Paek Management Group, 12,520 percent (Irving)
  • No. 82 Elite Robotics and Automation, 3,334 percent (Fort Worth)
  • No. 133 Outamation, 2,291 percent (Southlake)
  • No. 147 Red Creek Solutions, 2,119 percent (Frisco)
  • No. 155 JobTread Software, 2,071 percent (Dallas)
  • No. 164 DAX Eyewear, 1,977 percent (Nevada)
  • No. 186 Optimized Waste Removal, 1,830 percent (Fort Worth)
  • No. 204 Freight Flex, 1,642 percent (Denton)
  • No. 212 Maverick Power, 1,591 percent (McKinney)
  • No. 229 Innovative Life Sciences, 1,494 percent (McKinney)

San Antonio (one company)

  • No. 118 Hire With Near, 2,421 percent

Amazon to expand Prime Air drone delivery to almost 500 U.S. cities

In the air

https://sanantonio.culturemap.com/news/city-life/prime-air-expands-service-texas/By the end of the year, more Texans may be able to get ultrafast deliveries through Amazon’s Prime Air drone delivery service. On Wednesday, August 19, the company announced plans to majorly expand drone delivery to nearly 500 cities in the U.S., a sixfold increase from its current footprint.

Although Amazon did not reveal the cities it is targeting for the expansion, it almost certainly will include Texas. The state, which ranks among the biggest states for ecommerce activity, is currently home to four of the nation’s 11 Prime Air sites, including the Houston suburb of Richmond, as well as San Antonio, Waco, and Richardson (near Dallas).

For drone deliveries, the company tends to target areas unencumbered by skyscrapers and major airports. Each facility covers a delivery area of approximately 175 square miles.

Prime Air deliveries must be five pounds or less and fit into a large shoebox. Still, Amazon says more than 60 percent of its most ordered items are eligible. The list includes groceries, cosmetics, medications, clothing, and small electronics like Apple AirPods and Ring doorbells. More fragile items — like eggs — are not available through the service.

Orders arrive as quickly as 30 minutes, with most packages dropped around 60 minutes after checkout. Prime members will enjoy free delivery on orders $50 or more and a $2.99 fee for orders under $50. Non-members pay $4.99.

Amazon drone delivery Photo courtesy of Amazon

According to Amazon, customers should have little worries about orders being damaged or drones being entangled in trees. Shoppers see and confirm their delivery point when placing their first drone delivery order and can select a new area at any time.

Amazon also sends a notification to customers if there is no safe delivery space and does not fly at night or under severe weather conditions. The retail giant says noise is minimal with sound levels similar to idling delivery trucks.

Georgia, Ohio, Illinois, Idaho, and New York are the first states on the expansion plan. All future sites will be subject to regulatory hurdles like zoning changes, but the company is confident it will be serving tens of millions of new customers by year-end.

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Telsa targets Houston area for new $10 billion manufacturing plant

Project Sun City

Electric vehicle and clean energy company Tesla is considering building a new $10.1 billion solar cell manufacturing facility in Fort Bend County, according to documents filed with the Texas Comptroller’s Office.

If approved, the plant, called Project Sun City, would be located on a 3,050-acre site off FM 762 and FM 1994 in Richmond, Texas. Tesla aims to finish construction in 2028, with the plant being operational by early 2029.

The plant will manufacture photovoltaic (PV) solar cells and modules that can convert sunlight into electricity. PV Magazine reports that the facility is "the largest single manufacturing investment Tesla has proposed on paper."

Advisory and consulting firm Kroll submitted the documents to the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts and noted if an agreement regarding tax incentives isn't reached, the project will exit Texas.

Tesla has requested credits under the Jobs, Energy, Technology, and Innovation (JETI) Act. The incentive program aims to attract large, capital-intensive economic development projects by lowering the property taxes an entity must pay over 10 years if it meets requirements related to job creation and investment. For example, pharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers Squibb Co. recently announced that its forthcoming $2.3 billion Houston-area manufacturing site is a qualified project under the JETI program.

Kroll predicts that the facility would create 9,712 new full-time jobs, over 1,100 construction jobs and billions of dollars in future property tax revenue, the documents show. Additionally, it says the project will spur $1.1 billion in local business expenditures and that Texas would increase its GDP by approximately $107 billion as a result of the project activities.

Tesla opened its $200 million Megafactory in Brookshire, Texas, last year. The company is continuing its goal to deploy 100 gigawatts of solar manufacturing in the U.S before the end of 2028. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 100 gigawatts is equal to about 8 percent of the country's power grid capacity.

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This article originally appeared on EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

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