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Houston startup advances methane tech, sets sights on growth capital

making milestones

Babur Ozden is the founder and CEO of Aquanta Vision. Photo via LinkedIn

Houston-based climatech startup Aquanta Vision achieved key milestones in 2025 for its enhanced methane-detection app and has its focus set on future funding.

Among the achievements was the completion of the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Sensing and Computation for Environmental Decision-making (ASCEND) Engine. The program, based in Colorado and Wyoming, awarded a total of $3 million in grants to support the commercialization of projects that tackle critical resilience challenges, such as water security, wildfire prediction and response, and methane emissions.

Aquanta Vision’s funding went toward commercializing its NETxTEN app, which automates leak detection to improve accuracy, speed and safety. The company estimates that methane leaks cost the U.S. energy industry billions of dollars each year, with 60 percent of leaks going undetected. Additionally, methane leaks account for around 10 percent of natural gas's contribution to climate change, according to MIT’s climate portal.

Throughout the months-long ASCEND program, Aquanta Vision moved from the final stages of testing into full commercial deployment of NETxTEN. The app can instantly identify leaks via its physics-based algorithms and raw video output of optical gas imaging cameras. It does not require companies to purchase new hardware, requires no human intervention and is universally compatible with all optical gas imaging (OGI) cameras. During over 12,000 test runs, 100 percent of leaks were detected by NETxTEN’s system, according to the company.

The app is geared toward end-users in the oil and gas industry who use OGI cameras to perform regular leak detection inspections and emissions monitoring. Aquanta Vision is in the process of acquiring new clients for the app and plans to scale commercialization between now and 2028, Babur Ozden, the company’s founder and CEO, tells Energy Capital.

“In the next 16 months, (our goal is to) gain a number of key customers as major accounts and OEM partners as distribution channels, establish benefits and stickiness of our product and generate growing, recurring revenues for ourselves and our partners,” he says.

The company also received an investment for an undisclosed amount from Marathon Petroleum Corp. late last year. The funding complemented follow-on investments from Ecosphere Ventures and Odyssey Energy Advisors.

Ozden says the funds will go toward the extension of its runway through the end of 2026. It will also help Aquanta Vision grow its team.

Ozden and Marcus Martinez, a product systems engineer, founded Aquanta Vision in 2023 and have been running it as a two-person operation. The company brought on four interns last year, but is looking to add more staff.

Ozden says the company also plans to raise a seed round in 2027 “to catapult us to a rapid growth phase in 2028-29.”

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Currently, methane leak detection requires human evaluation. With this innovative new company's tech, this process can be automated. Photo via Getty Images

Houston methane leak detection startup gets green light from Chevron

ready to grow

A Houston startup that is developing a technology to detect methane leaks has moved on to phase two in Chevron's unique business accelerator.

Aquanta Vision Technologies, a Houston-based climate-tech startup, was selected to participate in the scale-up phase of Chevron Studio, a Houston program that matches entrepreneurs with technologies to turn them into businesses. Aquanta's computer vision software completely automates the identification of methane in optical gas imaging, or OGI. The technology originated from Colorado State University and CSU STRATA Technology Transfer.

Babur Ozden, a tech startup entrepreneur, along with Marcus Martinez, the lead inventor and Dan Zimmerle, co-inventor and director of METEC at CSU Energy Institute, came up with the technology to identify the presence and motion of methane in live video streams. Currently, this process of identifying methane requires a human camera operator to interpret the images. This can often be unreliable in the collection of emissions data.

Aquanta’s technology requires no human intervention and is universally compatible with all OGI cameras. Currently, only about 10 percent of the 20.5 million surveys done worldwide use this type of technology as it is extremely expensive to produce. Ozden said he hopes Aquanta will change that model.

“What we are doing — we are democratizing this feature, this capability, independent of the camera make and model,” Ozden tells EnergyCapital.

Aquanta’s software will be downloadable from App stores to the technician’s computers or phones.

“Our goal is to eliminate the absolute reliance of human interpretation and to give operators a chance to make detections faster and more accurately,” Ozden says.

“Our ultimate ambition is to reduce our footprint.” he continues. “Companies like Chevron and other leading players in the oil and gas industry are becoming much more committed (to reducing emissions)."

Babur Ozden is the founder of Aquanta Vision. Photo via LinkedIn

Aquanta will now test its software under various scenarios and develop an early commercial version of the product. In the next and final phase of the program, the company will begin marketing the technology for commercial use.

The goal of Chevron Studio is to take innovative new technologies out of the labs at universities and to scale them up to commercial ventures. The company takes the intellectual property developed at these labs and provides a platform to match entrepreneurs with the technology. The program provides funding to take the technologies from the very beginning to pilot and field trials. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, or NREL, manages Chevron Studio and works closely with the entrepreneurs to guide them through the program.

Gautam Phanse, the strategic relations manager for Chevron Technology Ventures says he was impressed with Ozden’s background as an entrepreneur and in the technology he brought to the table.

“We are looking at experienced entrepreneurs. People who can take an idea and stand on their own and develop it into a business,” he tells EnergyCapital.

Earlier this year, Phanse spoke to InnovationMap about Chevron Studio and its mission to match entrepreneurs with promising technologies coming out of universities and labs. He said the current focus areas for Chevron Studio are: carbon utilization, hydrogen and renewable energy, energy storage systems and solutions for circular economy.

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4 Houston researchers awarded projects in DOE's Genesis Mission

federal funding

The U.S. Department of Energy has named the nearly 300 projects selected under the Trump Administration's Genesis Mission, which aims to address some of the largest science and technology challenges in the country. The group features four projects from Houston universities and companies.

The initiative aims to unite government, industry, academia and philanthropy to lead to breakthroughs in energy, scientific discovery and national security, according to a release.

The selected projects feature 87 led by DOE and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) National Laboratories, 168 led by universities, 19 led by companies and 4 led by nonprofit organizations—totalling 342 participating institutions.

“America has no shortage of bold ideas or talented scientists, and the response to the Genesis Mission proves that,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in a news release. “The 278 projects selected today represent the very best of our nation’s scientific enterprise. The remarkable number of high-quality proposals we received demonstrates that America’s innovation pipeline is strong, and it points to even greater opportunities for future investment and continued expansion of the Genesis Mission portfolio.”

Twelve Texas-based projects were selected among the 278. The Houston projects and their researchers include:

Caroline Ajo-Franklin

Ajo-Franklin recieved a Phase I grant for her project "Predictive AI to Map Point Mutation Effects on Protein Function: Measurement and Biosynthesis of Isoprenoids." Ajo-Franklin is a professor of biosciences at Rice University, a CPRIT Scholar in Cancer Research and member of the Rice Synthetic Biology Institute. The project aims to accelerate the engineering of microbes that can produce isoprenoids, which are natural compounds that could replace petroleum-derived fuels, solvents and materials.

“This project creates a continuous feedback loop in which AI guides experiments and each experiment generates more detailed data to better hone the AI model,” Ajo-Franklin said in a news release. “In addition, it demonstrates the extraordinary star power Rice has recruited in protein engineering and synthetic biology.”

Anastasios Kyrillidis

Kyrillidis recived a Phase I grant for his project "Cracking the VQA Optimization Bottleneck: AI Methods for Quantum Chemistry and Materials." Kyrillidis is the Noah Harding Associate Professor of Computer Science at Rice and a member of the Ken Kennedy Institute. The project aims to develop AI tools to resolve bottlenecks in quantum computing for chemistry and materials research.

“Our goal is to replace fragile, hand-tuned optimization methods with intelligent systems that can learn from quantum computations while still operating within frameworks that provide strong mathematical guarantees,” Kyrillidis added in the release.

Myoungkyu Lee

Lee received a nearly $750,000 Phase I grant for his project "Physics-Informed AI Surrogates for Turbulent Forced Convection in Energy System." Lee is an assistant professor of mechanical aerospace engineering at the University of Houston. Lee will collaborate with researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and University of Pennsylvania on the project and develop artificial intelligence to accelerate the design of materials for advanced nuclear fission and fusion reactors.

“The goal is to develop a tool that runs much faster than today’s most detailed simulations while keeping errors small,” Lee said in a news release. “If successful, the approach could support better heat-transfer predictions for molten-salt reactor design and provide a starting point for studying heat removal in fusion blankets. This is one contribution among many toward reliable, carbon-free energy.”

Amit Padhi

Padhi recieved a grant for his project "Probabilistic Inference of Subsurface Fracture Connectivity for Stimulation Control with Physics-Informed AI." Padhi is a scientific advisor for Halliburton.

The DOE first called for applications for the Genesis Mission in March. At the time, the DOE shared that it would grant approximately $293 million to the selected teams via Phase I awards, ranging from $500,000 to $750,000 for nine-month project periods, and Phase II awards, for $6 million to $15 million over a three-year project period.

Since then, however, the initiative has grown with 15 federal agencies now granting research awards and funding opportunities under the Genesis umbrella. The White House announced this week that it had secured more than $5 billion in federal commitments to expand the initiative.

SLB teams with Liberty Energy on modular power for AI data centers

ai alliance

Houston-headquartered SLB and Denver-based Liberty Energy Inc. announced a strategic agreement this month to support the rapid growth of new data center capacity.

Under the agreement, SLB will supply modular data center infrastructure and oversee large-scale execution, while Liberty will provide modular power generation systems and behind-the-meter power management technology for developers looking to add capacity. According to Reuters, the power will come from natural gas generation.

“The bottleneck in AI infrastructure is no longer just compute. It is the ability to deliver infrastructure and power on the timelines the market now demands,” Gavin Rennick, president of SLB’s New Energy and Industrial business, said in a news release. “By bringing together complementary infrastructure and power capabilities, we will help developers accelerate deployment of new data center capacity.”

The companies seek to specifically offer the modular technologies in areas without traditional grid connections or where grid capacity is limited.

They also aim to improve the "efficiency, flexibility and environmental performance of future data center energy systems," potentially through solutions like hybrid power systems and digital energy management, according to the news release.

Goldman Sachs estimates that U.S. data center capacity will more than double from 31 gigawatts in 2025 to 66 gigawatts in 2027. Other reports predict that Houston and Texas will be home to a significant portion of the data center boom, with capacity in the city and the state also expected to double in the next few years.

“The scale and complexity of AI energy infrastructure is fundamentally changing how power systems are built and deployed,” Ron Gusek, CEO of Liberty Energy, added in the release. “Liberty’s comprehensive power service platform is engineered to meet this transition, as customers increasingly prioritize tailored, integrated solutions. Building on our long-standing relationship with SLB, we are excited to bring power solutions that address immediate capacity constraints while supporting the next generation of energy systems.”

SLB sold its onshore hydraulic fracturing business in the United States and Canada to Liberty Energy in December 2020 in exchange for a 37 percent equity interest in the company.

New Rice study details how carbon capture could reduce AI data center emissions

by the numbers

A new study out of Rice University points to carbon capture and storage methods as pivotal solutions to addressing emissions from AI-driven data centers.

The study was authored by Hon Chung Lau, an adjunct professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Rice University and founder of Low Carbon Energies LLC, and Steve C. Tsai, an energy transition consultant at Low Carbon Energies LLC, and published in the journal Energy & Fuels.

According to the study, U.S. data center power capacity could more than quadruple in five years, growing from 40 gigawatts in 2025 to 169 gigawatts by 2030. Without proper regulation of emissions, the report estimates that carbon dioxide produced by fossil-fuel power plants supplying electricity to data centers could grow at the same scale, increasing from 90 million metric tons to more than 404 million metric tons over the same time period.

The researchers analyzed publicly available data on announced U.S. data centers, which included energy sources, locations, and projected power capacity before estimating data center-related carbon emissions based on each state’s electricity mix. From there, they examined whether those emissions could be captured and stored underground in saline aquifers.

The team estimates that 34 states have enough saline aquifer storage capacity to store more than 100 years of projected data center-related carbon dioxide emissions beyond 2030. Aquifers could store an estimated 59 million metric tons of data center-related carbon dioxide, or about 66 percent of the sector’s emissions in 2025. However, that calculation could grow to 299 million metric tons, or about 74 percent of projected data center-related emissions by 2030.

The researchers found that more than 90 percent of data center-related carbon dioxide emissions could potentially be mitigated through carbon capture and storage when out-of-state storage options are included, even though they note that carbon capture isn’t the only solution.

“It does show that the geology exists to make a meaningful impact, especially in states where data center growth is strongest,” Lau said in a news release.

Rapid growth in states including Texas, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and Illinois was considered in the study. According to the findings, Texas would need to add 25 gigawatts of power capacity by 2030 to meet projected data center demand, as data centers require reliable electricity 24/7.

“Data centers are becoming one of the defining energy challenges of the AI era,” Lau added in the news release. “The question is not only whether we can build enough computing infrastructure, but whether we can power it in a way that is reliable, affordable and compatible with decarbonization goals.”

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