Houston startup taps new corporate partner for AI-backed sustainability consumer tech

out of the boxes

IBM and Boxes recently partnered to integrate the IBM watsonx Assistant into Boxes devices, providing a way for consumer packaged brands to find out more than ever about what its customers like and want. Photo courtesy of Boxes

With the help of a new conversational artificial intelligence platform, a Houston startup is ready to let brands get up close and personal with consumers while minimizing waste.

The Boxes device, about the size of a 40-inch television screen, dispenses products to consumers in a modern and sustainable spin on the old-fashioned large vending machine.

CEO Fernando Machin Gojdycz learned that business from his entrepreneur father, Carlos Daniel Machin, while growing up in Uruguay.

“That’s where my passion comes from — him,” Gojdycz says of his father. In 2016, Gojdycz founded Boxes in Uruguay with some engineer friends

Funded by a $2,000 grant from the University of Uruguay, the company's mission was “to democratize and economize affordable and sustainable shopping,” in part by eliminating wasteful single-use plastic packaging.

“I worked for one year from my bedroom,” he tells InnovationMap.

Fernando Machin Gojdycz founded Boxes in Uruguay before relocating the company to Greentown Houston. Photo courtesy of Boxes

The device, attached to a wall, offers free samples, or purchased products, in areas of high foot traffic, with a touch-screen interface. Powered by watsonx Assistant, the device asks survey questions of the customer, who can answer or not, on their mobile devices, via a QR code.

In return for completing a survey, customers can get a digital coupon, potentially generating future sales. The software and AI tech tracks sales and consumer preferences, giving valuable real-time market insight.

“This is very powerful,” he says.

Boxes partnered in Uruguay with major consumer brands like Kimberly-Clark, SC Johnson and Unilever, and during COVID, pivoted and offered PPE products. Then, with plans of an expansion into the United States, Boxes in 2021 landed its first U.S. backer, with $120,000 in funding from startup accelerator Techstars.

This led to a partnership with the Minnesota Twins, where Boxes devices at Target Field dispensed brand merchandise like keychains and bottles of field dirt.

Gojdycz says while a company in the Northeast is developing a product similar in size, Boxes is not “targeting traditional spaces.” Its software and integration with AI allows Boxes to seamlessly change the device screen and interface, remotely, as well.

Boxes aims to provide the devices in smaller spaces, like restrooms, where they have a device at the company's headquarters at climate tech incubator Greentown Labs. Boxes also recently added a device at Hewlett Packard Enterprise headquarters in Spring, as part of HPE’s diversity startup program.

Boxes hopes to launch another sustainable innovation later this year, in universities and supermarkets. The company is also developing a device that would offer refillable detergent and personal cleaning products like shampoo and conditioner with a reusable container.

Since plastic packaging accounts for 40 percent of retail price, consumers would pay far less, making a huge difference, particularly for lower-income families, he says.

“We are working to make things happen, because we have tried to pitch this idea,” he says.

Some supermarket retailers worry they may lose money or market share, and that shoppers may forget to bring the refill bottles with them to the store, for example.

“It’s about..the U.S. customer,” he says, “….but we think that sooner or later, it will come.”

Boxes has gotten funding from the accelerator startup branch of Houston-based software company Softeq, as well as Mission Driven Finance, Google for Startups Latino Founders Fund, and Right Side Capital, among others.

“Our primary challenges are scaling effectively with a small, yet compact team and maintaining control over our financial runway,” Gojdycz says.

The company has seven employees, including two on its management team.

Gojdycz says they are actively hiring, particularly in software and hardware engineering, but also in business development.

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This article originally ran on InnovationMap.

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Shell to shut down Volta EV charging business with 2,000 stations

pulling the plug

A little over two years after buying it for $169 million, Houston-based Shell USA is shutting down its Volta C electric vehicle charging business.

Shell confirmed to AdExchanger that it will dismantle Volta’s network of more than 2,000 EV charging stations this year. A Shell spokesperson said the energy giant is turning its attention to high-speed public charging stations at Shell-branded sites like gas stations and standalone EV hubs.

Around the world, Shell operates more than 70,000 public EV charging stations. In 2024, the company said it was aiming for a global total of about 200,000 charging stations by 2030.

When Shell announced in March 2023 that it had completed its acquisition of Volta, the energy company said it was gaining an EV charging network with more than 3,000 charging stations at places such as shopping centers, grocery stores and pharmacies.

Shell had said that although Volta’s revenue came from advertising on screens at EV charging stations, it planned to increase the number of charging stations that required motorists to pay for power.

Shell explored a sale of the Volta business earlier this year but didn’t find a buyer, according to AdExchanger.

ExxonMobil may delay or cancel plans for $7 billion Baytown hydrogen plant

project uncertainty

Spring-based ExxonMobil, the country’s largest oil and gas company, might delay or cancel what would be the world’s largest low-carbon hydrogen plant due to a significant change in federal law. The project carries a $7 billion price tag.

The Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act created a new 10-year incentive, the 45V tax credit, for production of clean hydrogen. But under President Trump’s "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," the window for starting construction of low-carbon hydrogen projects that qualify for the tax credit has narrowed. The Inflation Reduction Act mandated that construction start by 2033. But the Big Beautiful Bill switched the construction start time to early 2028.

“While our project can meet this timeline, we’re concerned about the development of a broader market, which is critical to transition from government incentives,” ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Darren Woods said during the company’s recent second-quarter earnings call.

Woods said ExxonMobil is working to determine whether a combination of the 45Q tax credit for carbon capture projects and the revised 45V tax credit will help pave the way for a “broader” low-carbon hydrogen market.

“If we can’t see an eventual path to a market-driven business, we won’t move forward with the [Baytown] project,” Woods said.

“We knew that helping to establish a brand-new product and a brand-new market initially driven by government policy would not be easy or advance in a straight line,” he added.

Woods said ExxonMobil is trying to nail down sales contracts connected to the project, including exports of ammonia to Asia and Europe and sales of hydrogen in the U.S.

ExxonMobil announced in 2022 that it would build the low-carbon hydrogen plant at its refining and petrochemical complex in Baytown. The company has said the plant is slated to go online in 2027 and 2028.

As it stands now, ExxonMobil wants the Baytown plant to produce up to 1 billion cubic feet of hydrogen per day made from natural gas, and capture and store more than 98 percent of the associated carbon dioxide. The company has said the project could store as much as 10 million metric tons of CO2 per year.

EPA scraps $7B solar program, stripping Texas of hundreds of millions in clean energy funds

funding cut

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is ending a $7 billion Biden-era program that was supposed to enable low-income Americans to access affordable solar power. The program, which EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin called a “boondoggle,” would have benefited more than 900,000 U.S. households.

In line with the EPA’s action, the Lone Star State is losing a $249.7 million grant awarded last year to the Harris County-led Texas Solar for All Coalition. The grant money would have equipped more than 46,000 low-income and disadvantaged communities and households in Texas with residential solar power. The nonprofit Solar United Neighbors organization said Texas had already begun to roll out this initiative.

Also slipping out of Texas’ hands are:

A more than $156 million 19-state grant awarded to the Clean Energy Fund of Texas in partnership with the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at Houston’s Texas Southern University. The Clean Energy Fund is a Houston-based “green bank” that backs investments in solar and wind power.
Part of a $249.3 million multistate grant awarded to the Community Power Coalition’s Powering America Together Program. The nonprofit Inclusive Prosperity Capital organization leads the coalition.
Part of a $249.8 million multistate grant awarded to the Solar Access for Nationwide Affordable Housing Program, led by the nonprofit GRID Alternatives organization.

In a post on the X social media platform, Zeldin said the recently passed “One Big Beautiful Bill” killed the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which would have financed the $7 billion Solar for All program.

“The bottom line is this: EPA no longer has the statutory authority to administer the program or the appropriated funds to keep this boondoggle alive,” Zeldin said.

Anya Schoolman, executive director of Washington, D.C.-based Solar United Neighbors, accused the EPA of illegally terminating the Solar for All program. She said ending the program “harms families struggling with rising energy costs and will cost us good local jobs.”

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, joined Schoolman in alleging the EPA’s “outrageous” action is illegal. Sanders introduced the legislation that established the Solar for All program.

The senator lashed out at President Trump for axing the program in order “to protect the obscene profits of his friends in the oil and gas industry.”

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