Houston startup designing emergency response drones lands $5.2M in seed funding

cha-ching

Paladin’s AI-enhanced autonomous drones help public safety agencies, such as police and fire departments, respond to 911 calls. Photo via paladindrones.io

Houston-based Paladin, whose remotely controlled drones help first responders react quickly to emergencies, has collected $5.2 million in seed funding.

Gradient, a seed fund that backs AI-oriented startups, led the round. Also participating were Toyota Ventures, the early-stage VC arm of Japanese automaker Toyota; venture capital firm Khosla Ventures; and VC fund 1517.

“We believe Paladin will drive meaningful change in public safety and redefine how communities are served,” Gradient said in an announcement about the seed round.

In 2019, Paladin received $1.3 million in seed funding from Khosla Ventures and Gmail creator Paul Buchheit, a group partner at Y Combinator. In 2018, the year it was co-founded by Divyaditya Shrivastava and Trevor Pennypacker, Paladin graduated from Y Combinator’s three-month boot camp.

Paladin’s AI-enhanced autonomous drones help public safety agencies, such as police and fire departments, respond to 911 calls. These drones provide aerial views of emergency scenes in an effort to decrease response times, improve “situational awareness,” and save lives, according to a Gradient blog post.

Among the agencies that have tried out Paladin’s technology is the Houston area’s Memorial Villages Police Department. The department participated in a three-month Paladin pilot project in 2019.

"(This is) one of the first departments in the country to be testing this technology," Shrivastava told InnovationMap in 2019. "We're very limited in the area that we cover, and that's just because we're taking baby steps and going as carefully and deliberately as possible."

Gradient says more than 12,000 drone missions have been performed using Paladin’s hardware and software platform. Agencies that have adopted the platform report average response times under 90 seconds. Furthermore, the technology has allowed them to resolve nearly one-third of 911 calls without dispatching first responders.

“Paladin keeps innovating, recently launching Payload Drop, a groundbreaking feature that enables drones to deliver lifesaving equipment — such as Narcan, life vests, and AEDs — directly to emergency scenes,” says Gradient.

On its website, Paladin says it envisions autonomous drones responding to every 911 call in the U.S. by 2027.

“The information is paramount, the technology exists and is rapidly improving, and the need is there. We want to help,” Paladin proclaims.

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Houston can learn a lot from the decades of success from Silicon Valley, according to this Houston founder, who outlines just what all the city needs to do to become the startup city it has the potential to be. Photo via Getty Images

Houston expert: Can Houston replicate and surpass the success of Silicon Valley?

guest column

Anyone who knows me knows, as a Houston Startup Founder, I often muse about the still developing potential for startups in Houston, especially considering the amount of industry here, subject matter expertise, capital, and size.

For example, Houston is No. 2 in the country for Fortune 500 Companies — with 26 Bayou City companies on the list — behind only NYC, which has 47 ranked corporations, according to Fortune.

Considering layoffs, fund closings, and down rounds, things aren’t all that peachy in San Francisco for the first time in a long time, and despite being a Berkeley native, I’m rooting for Houston now that I’m a transplant.

Let’s start by looking at some stats.

While we’re not No. 1 in all areas, I believe we have the building blocks to be a major player in startups, and in tech (and not just energy and space tech). How? If the best predictor of future success is history, why not use the template of the GOAT of all startup cities: San Francisco and YCombinator. Sorry fellow founders – you’ve heard me talk about this repeatedly.

YCombinator is considered the GOAT of Startup Accelerators/Incubators based on:

  1. The Startup success rate: I’ve heard it’s as high as 75 percent (vs. the national average of 5 to 10 percent) Arc Search says 50 percent of YC Co’s fail within 12 years – not shabby.
  2. Their startup-to-unicorn ratio: 5 to 7 percent of YC startups become unicorns depending on the source — according to an Arc Search search (if you haven’t tried Arc Search do – super cool).
  3. Their network.

YC also parlayed that success into a "YC Startup School" offering:

  1. Free weekly lessons by YC partners — sometimes featuring unicorn alumni
  2. A document and video Library (YC SAFE, etc)
  3. Startup perks for students (AWS cloud credits, etc.)
  4. YC co-founder matching to help founders meet co-founders

Finally, there’s the over $80 billion in returns, according to Arc search, they’ve generated since their 2005 inception with a total of 4,000 companies in their portfolio at over $600 billion in value. So GOAT? Well just for perspective there were a jaw-dropping 18,000 startups in startup school the year I participated – so GOAT indeed.

So how do they do it? Based on anecdotal evidence, their winning formula is said to be the following well-oiled process:

  1. Bring over 282 startups (the number in last cohort) to San Francisco for 90 days to prototype, refine the product, and land on the go-to-market strategy. This includes a pre-seed YC SAFE investment of a phased $500,000 commitment for a fixed min 7 percent of equity, plus more equity at the next round’s valuation, according to YC.
  2. Over 50 percent of the latest cohort were idea stage and heavily AI focused.
  3. Traction day: inter-portfolio traction the company. YC has over 4,000 portfolio companies who can and do sign up for each other’s companies products because “they’re told to."
  4. Get beta testers and test from YC portfolio companies and YC network.
  5. If they see the traction scales to a massively scalable business, they lead the seed round and get this: schedule and attend the VC meetings with the founders.
  6. They create a "fear of missing out" mentality on Sand Hill Road as they casually mention who they’re meeting with next.
  7. They block competitors in the sector by getting the top VC’s to co-invest with then in the seed so competitors are locked out of the A list VC funding market, who then are up against the most well-funded and buzzed about players in the space.

If what I've seen is true, within a six-month period a startup idea is prototyped, tested, pivoted, launched, tractioned, seeded, and juiced for scale with people who can ‘make’ the company all in their corner, if not already on their board.

So how on earth can Houston best this?

  1. We have a massive amount of businesses — around 200,000 — and people — an estimated 7.3 million and growing.
  2. We have capital in search of an identity beyond oil.
  3. Our Fortune 500 companies that are hiring consultants for things that startups here that can do for free, quicker, and for a fraction of the extended cost.
  4. We have a growing base of tech talent for potential machine learning and artificial intelligence talent
  5. A sudden shot at the increasingly laid off big tech engineers.
  6. We have more accelerators and incubators.

What do we need to pull it off?

  1. An organized well-oiled YC-like process
  2. An inter-Houston traction process
  3. An "Adopt a Startup" program where local companies are willing to beta test and iterate with emerging startup products
  4. We have more accelerators but the cohorts are small — average five to 10 per cohort.
  5. Strategic pre-seed funding, possibly with corporate partners (who can make the company by being a client) and who de-risk the investment.
  6. Companies here to use Houston startup’s products first when they’re launched.
  7. A forum to match companies’ projects or labs groups etc., to startups who can solve them.
  8. A process in place to pull all these pieces together in an organized, structured sequence.

There is one thing missing in the list: there has to be an entity or a person who wants to make this happen. Someone who sees all the pieces, and has the desire, energy and clout to make it happen; and we all know this is the hardest part. And so for now, our hopes of besting YC may be up in the air as well.

------

Jo Clark is the founder of Circle.ooo, a Houston-based tech startup that's streamlining events management.

A Houston startup based out of the TMC Innovation Factory has announced funding and upcoming trials. Photo courtesy of TMC

Houston health tech startup secures $16M series A, prepares for first U.S. clinical trials

money moves

Fueled by fresh funding in the bank, a medical device startup has announced upcoming trials.

VenoStent, Inc., a company developing an innovative tool to improve outcomes for hemodialysis patients, has closed $16 million in a series A round of financing. Two Charleston, South Carolina-based firms — Good Growth Capital and IAG Capital Partners — led the round.

The company also announced it received Investigational Device Exemption from the FDA for its United States clinical trial, SAVE-FistulaS.

“Our mission at VenoStent is to improve the quality and length of life of dialysis patients. On the heels of our very promising results in several preclinical studies and a 20-patient feasibility study that led to our Breakthrough Designation last year, this recent IDE approval is perhaps our biggest milestone to date," Tim Boire, CEO of VenoStent, says in a news release. "We now enter an exciting new epoch in our company’s development that we believe will ultimately result in FDA Approval and vastly improve the quality and length of life for patients."

VenoStent's novel therapeutic medical device is a bioabsorbable wrap. Image courtesy of VenoStent

VenoStent's series A will fund the trial, expand manufacturing capabilities, and more. The company is targeting the more than 800,000 people in the U.S. with end-stage renal disease. Currently, more than half of the surgeries performed to initiate hemodialysis fail within a year. VenoStent's novel therapeutic medical device is a bioabsorbable wrap that reduces vein collapse by providing mechanical support and promoting outward vein growth.

“This trial is designed to provide the highest level of clinical evidence. We’re excited to be in this position to treat the first patients in the United States with this technology, and demonstrate the safety and efficacy of our device,” continues Boire in the release.

Per the release, the company is aiming for FDA Approval and be the first-to-market device to improve hemodialysis access surgery.

“We’re extremely pleased to be partnering with VenoStent on this critical mission. This company and technology are poised for commercial success to address a critical, unmet need,” says Bob Crutchfield, operating partner at Good Growth Capital, in the release.

The TMC Venture Fund also contributed to the series A investment round, along with SNR, Baylor Angel Network / Affinity Fund, Creative Ventures, Cowtown Angels, Alumni Ventures, and other notable angel investors. Past investors in VenoStent include KidneyX, National Science Foundation, National Institute of Health, Y Combinator, Health Wildcatters, and the Texas Halo Fund.

“VenoStent’s data and traction to date is impressive and gives us a lot of confidence in their continued success. We look forward to helping them get this Breakthrough product to market and help patients that are in dire need of this innovative technology,” says Joel Whitley, partner at IAG Capital Partners, in the release.

Tim Boire is the CEO of VenoStent. Photo via LinkedIn

Paladin Drones wants eyes in the skies within 30 seconds of an emergency call. Getty Images

Houston drone company creating the next generation of first responders

To the rescue

When 911 is called, first responders usually arrive at the scene around three or four minutes after the call's placed. But Houston-based Paladin Drones wants to have eyes on the ground ­— or eyes in the sky — within the first 30 seconds.

The company's mission is simple: to outfit public agencies and first-responders with drones that can be autonomously deployed to the site of an emergency. Equipped with thermal sensors and flying around 200 feet high, the drones can give police and firefighters near-instantaneous information on a situation underway.

At the beginning of April, Paladin Drones began working with the Memorial Villages Police Department to respond to incidents in Memorial Villages, Hunter's Creek, Piney Point Village, and Bunker Hill.

"(This is) one of the first departments in the country to be testing this technology," says Paladin Drones co-founder Divyaditya Shrivastava. "We're very limited in the area that we cover, and that's just because we're taking baby steps and going as carefully and deliberately as possible."

Paladin Drones was co-founded by Shrivastava and Trevor Pennypacker. In 2018, the company went through a three-month boot camp at Y Combinator, a California-based incubator that's churned out Dropbox, AirBNB, Instacart and more. Through Y Combinator, Paladin Drones was connected with venture capital investors in Houston.

The company's drones capture critical information, such as a vehicle's color and body type, a suspect's clothing, or the direction a suspect fled the scene. And since roughly 70 percent of 911 calls involve witnesses or passerby giving inaccurate information about the emergency's location, these drones will be able to pinpoint the exact location of an emergency, further aiding the arrival of first responders.

"We're working on tracking technology to give the drones the capability to auto-follow (suspects)," Shrivastava says.

Paladin Drones is looking to hire a handful of employees in the coming months, Shrivastava says. He declined to disclose any information on the company's funding plans, but said it's still involved with Y Combinator in California.

Shrivastava began developing Paladin Drones when he was finishing high school in Ohio. The summer before his senior year, a friend's house burned down. While nobody was injured in the fire, the home was destroyed, and Shrivastava spoke with the local firefighters. Tragically, the 911 call that alerted firefighters of the emergency was one of the 70 percent of calls that involved inaccurate location information.

"If they'd known the exact location, the house would've been saved," Shrivastava says. "A fire doubles every 30 seconds."

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Intuitive Machines lands $600M satellite deal, NASA ‘spacecraft bus’ contract

space deals

Houston-based space infrastructure company Intuitive Machines has scored two astronomical deals.

The deals add to the company’s soaring success. As of June 30, Intuitive Machines had a record-high $1.8 billion backlog of orders, a $1.5 billion increase from the end of last year. The current backlog includes orders for more than 80 spacecraft.

The company, which went public in 2023, expects this year’s revenue to total $900 million to $1 billion. In the first half of 2026, Intuitive Machines generated nearly $393 million in revenue.

Intuitive Machines estimates its total available market is valued at more than $150 billion.

$600 million-plus deal represents ‘important milestone’

On Monday, Intuitive Machines said it picked up a $600 million-plus deal to develop three commercial satellites for an undisclosed customer over the course of about two years.

Intuitive Machines says it will design, manufacture, set up and support several spacecraft “for a critical communications infrastructure mission.”

Steve Altemus, the company’s CEO, says the deal represents “an important milestone for Intuitive Machines and reflects the confidence our customers place in our ability to deliver high-performance spacecraft for a broad range of mission needs.”

Company nails down NASA deal for ‘spacecraft bus’

A day after announcing the $600 million-plus deal, Intuitive Machines said it secured a new contract with NASA.

Intuitive Machines says NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California will use the company’s IM 300 “spacecraft bus” for an EAGLE-VSWIR Earth observation mission. The mission is scheduled to launch in 2028.

Aside from supplying the IM 300 bus, Intuitive Machines will carry out mission support services.

The low-Earth-orbit mission will be equipped with Intuitive Machines’ hyperspectral visible to shortwave infrared (VSWIR) instrument. This technology sees colors and details that aren’t visible to the human eye.

The instrument is “designed to perform surface biology and geology observations from Earth orbit while demonstrating technologies that could support future lunar and Mars exploration missions,” Intuitive Machines says.

Intuitive Machines builds mission-critical spacecraft, systems, and infrastructure for business and government customers. To date, the company has produced more than 300 spacecraft, delivered over 575 pounds of payload to the moon and launched about 100 satellites.

9 Houston-based companies make Fortune Global 500 list in 2026

Worldwide Rankings

Nine Houston companies landed on the 2026 Fortune Global 500 list, which ranks the world's largest corporations by revenue for the 2025 fiscal year.

Houston's showing on the list was led by energy companies, with Spring’s ExxonMobil claiming the top local spot. Here’s what Houston-area companies made the list, and where they ranked:

  • No. 15 ExxonMobil
  • No. 36 Chevron
  • No. 61 Phillip 66
  • No. 159 Sysco
  • No. 243 ConocoPhillips
  • No. 292 Enterprise Products Partners
  • No. 343 Plains GP Holdings
  • No. 460 SLB
  • No. 481 Hewlett Packard Enterprise

After 12 years as No.1, Arkansas-based Walmart was replaced this year by Seattle-based Amazon in the top spot for 2026. Amazon achieved this by bringing in $700 billion in revenue in 2025, representing a 12 percent increase from the previous year.

"Across global business, we see again and again that the leaders who are winning are those who embrace change,” Alyson Shontell, Fortune's editor in chief and chief content officer, said in a news release. "Amazon has topped the Fortune Global 500, knocking Walmart off its pedestal. The company has continually reinvented itself across new businesses and bold bets—including a $200 billion capital commitment, largely to building its capacity for AI and cloud computing, in this year alone."

The U.S. has 141 companies on the 2026 Fortune Global 500 list, which is the most of any country. Companies in America generated $15.5 trillion in aggregate revenues, a 6 percent increase from the previous year.

The number of women CEOs at Fortune Global 500 companies reached a record of 34 top leaders, who represented 6.8 percent of CEOs of companies on the list.

Technology was the standout growth industry on this year’s list, with 38 companies earning revenues that grew 20 percent to about $4 trillion in 2025, with profits climbing 36 percent to $835 billion. The financial sector accounted for the largest share of companies on the list again, with 123 companies in that sector. The energy sector claimed the No. 2 industry spot with 77 companies making the list.

In June, the Fortune 500 list was released, and Texas led the United States with 57 Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the state, generating $2.8 trillion in combined revenue.

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
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