SafePass is a reusable visitor pass for large campuses — corporate, schools, oil and gas, etc. — that need a digital system to protect both the campus and the visitor. Photo via safepassglobal.com

There's an only public service announcement from the 1960s that asks, "It's 10:00 p.m., do you know where your children are?" The idea behind it was to encourage parents to ensure their children's safety, by encouraging them to be home before what was then the youth curfew in several states.

"Do you know where your visitors are right now?" asks the SafePass website, providing an answer: "You do if you have SafePass."

The visitor management system is the brainchild of Ronald Huff, who initially envisioned the system as a hall pass for students. The electronic pass would monitor students in real time, if they left class to go to the nurse or the restroom, meaning adults would be able to find them in the event of an emergency. But as Huff and his business partners proceeded through product development, they realized SafePass had a stronger lure as a system that could manage visitors across several platforms – business, schools, and secure environments.

The system works like this: companies issue a SafePass visitor badge to visitors, contractors or others who are temporarily on the grounds of their facilities. The badge records signal strengths from WiFi routers set up around the facility and tracks where the visitor is in real time.

"Visitors don't know a facility as well as the people who work there every day do," said Huff. "If there's smoke or a fire, they might get lost. So, SafePass helps provide a record of where they are, meaning that people can find them if there's an emergency or an evacuation."

SafePass is also reusable. The electronic badge is designed to be used over and over again, unlike common printed paper badges that visitors stick on.

"We're 100 percent eco-friendly," said Huff.

He and his partners built the demo for the product at the end of 2017 and began shopping it at trade shows. The reaction was immediate, with multiple companies wanting to take on the system. SafePass is about to launch a pilot phase with some Fortune 100 companies, and has plans to expand soon beyond that.

Companies can currently email their floor plans to SafePass, which creates routes within the floor plans, fixing geolocations. Then the signal strength from WiFi routers is digitally mapped within the building using an Android app. This allows the electronic badge to know where a guest is as he or she is traveling throughout a given facility.

"I think most people know that cell phones record almost everything we do," said Huff, explaining that SafePass isn't designed to infringe on personal privacy. "This isn't a Big Brother situation. Above all else, we're concerned about the safety of both people who are visiting a facility and those who work there every day."

Huff said SafePass can also help companies with safety and security compliance. For instance, oil and gas companies are audited by third parties on how secure their facilities are. SafePass' technology helps them not only score higher on an audit, but actually keep their facilities secure.

"A product like ours solves so many different problems," he said.

After nearly two and half years of development, Huff said he's excited about what's to come.

"This is really my baby," he said of the company. "And it's been such a blessing to work with this team of developers and programmers and sales people. We've got a great team and great clients. This is a dream come true."

SafePass has made a splash on the Houston digital innovation scene and was even named one of the most promising startups at the recent Texas Digital Summit.

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Intuitive Machines lands $9.8M contract to help complete orbital transfer vehicle

space funding

Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which rang the NASDAQ opening bell today, has secured a $9.8 million Phase Two government contract for its orbital transfer vehicle.

The contract will push the project through its Critical Design Review phase, which is the final engineering milestone before manufacturing can begin, according to a news release from the company.

Intuitive Machine's orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) is designed to transfer payloads between Earth's orbit and the Moon and is built around the company's Nova-C lander, which has been a part of two successful lunar missions.

“Our OTV is a direct evolution of our lunar surface delivery missions—positioning us to expand into the rapidly growing market for in-space logistics,” Steve Altemus, Intuitive Machines CEO, said in the release. “We’re leveraging our flight-proven technology to operate a mission-ready service that delivers customer payloads across orbits—from Earth to the Moon and beyond.”

The company says the fast, flexible vehicle could be used for orbital servicing, logistics and communications in medium earth orbit, low lunar orbit and a variety of other destinations.

Intuitive Machines expects to begin manufacturing and flight integration as soon as 2026, once the design review is completed.

The non-NASA contract is for an undisclosed government customer, which Intuitive Machines says reinforces its "strategic move to diversify its customer base and deliver orbital capabilities that span commercial, civil, and national security space operations."

The company has received millions from NASA for its lunar rover, lunar lander, science and technology payloads, and communications and navigation services over the years. It also recently landed up to $10 million to help develop an Earth re-entry vehicle and in-space biomanufacturing lab from Texas's Space Exploration and Research Fund.

Earlier this month, the City of Houston agreed to add three acres of commercial space for Intuitive Machines at the Houston Spaceport at Ellington Airport. Read more here.

Houston tech jobs to grow in 2025 as Texas leads U.S. in new tech employment

by the numbers

Tech employment in the Houston metro area is expected to climb by more than two percent this year, according to a new projection.

CompTIA’s State of the Tech Workforce 2025 report forecasts the Houston area will employ 158,176 tech professionals this year, compared with an estimated 154,905 last year. That would be an increase of 2.1 percent.

These numbers take into account tech workers across all industries, not just those employed in the tech sector. Many of these professionals do work in the tech sector (40 percent), with the remainder (60 percent) employed in other sectors.

Even more impressive than the year-to-year increase is the jump in Houston-area tech employment from 2019 to 2025. During that period, tech employment grew 16.6 percent, according to the report.

The Houston area ranks eighth among major metro areas for the number of tech jobs expected to be added this year (3,271). Dallas rises to No. 1 for the most jobs expected to be added (projection of 13,997 new tech jobs in 2025), with Austin at No. 5 (7,750 new jobs) and San Antonio at No. 21 (1,617 new jobs).

On a state-by-state basis, Texas ranks first for the number of tech workers projected to be added this year (40,051)—up significantly from the 8,181 jobs estimated to be added in 2024—and second for the size of the tech workforce last year (972,747), the report says. The Lone Star State lands at No. 4 for the highest percentage (24 percent) of tech jobs expected to be added from 2025 to 2035.

Backed by a nearly $1.4 billion commitment from the state, the semiconductor industry is helping propel the growth of tech jobs in Houston and throughout Texas.

In 2023, the state launched the Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund. The fund provides incentives to encourage semiconductor research, design and manufacturing in Texas. State lawmakers allocated $698.3 million for the fund. Another $660 million in state money will help establish semiconductor research and development centers at the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University.

“Texas has the innovation, the infrastructure, and the talent to continue to lead the American resurgence in critical semiconductor manufacturing and the technologies of tomorrow,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a release.

The Houston area is benefiting from the semiconductor boom.

For example, chip manufacturer Nvidia and electronics maker Foxconn plan to build a factory in Houston that will produce AI supercomputers.

Nvidia said in April that the AI supercomputers “are the engines of a new type of data center created for the sole purpose of processing artificial intelligence — AI factories that are the infrastructure powering a new AI industry.”

Meanwhile, tech giant Apple plans to open a 250,000-square-foot factory in Houston that will manufacture servers for its data centers in support of Apple’s AI business. The Houston plant is part of a four-year, $500 million nationwide expansion that Apple unveiled in February.