Boston-based tech company grows Houston team to deliver robotics to energy industry

do the robot

Square Robot's Houston office has the ability to showcase the technology to its potential customers. Photo courtesy of Square Robot

The robots are coming. Although the rise of Chat GPT has frightened plenty of professionals, we’re not on the precipice of the singularity just yet. And some of Houston’s coolest robots are contained in above-ground tanks, simply doing jobs that are too expensive and difficult for humans. The mechanical helpers in question come courtesy of Square Robot.

Square Robot co-founder and chief technology officer Jerome Vaganay started the company in 2016 in Boston. The company opened its Houston office in August of 2019.

“A lot of our partners and client base is out of here,” says director of operations, Matt Crist.

Karishma Prasad, director of technical operations, who joined the team in Houston earlier this year, adds “It’s a great centralized place for us. Houston is a great hub both nationally and internationally. There is so much energy transition innovation happening here.”

Square Robot is indeed a robotics company, but it trades in a very specific type of robot. The SR-1 is an innovative tank inspector.

“Since the ‘60s there’s been a traditional way of going into a tank. People would go inside and clean it with a variety of products," Crist explains. "Once it was clean, they would come in and inspect it repair it and that could take months.”

In fact, it could often cause a 15 or 16-week outage, he says.

Square Robot’s brainstorm was to take the human element out of the process. In other words, robots can do the job more safely, efficiently and quickly than a human ever could by collecting 18,000 data points per square foot, while allowing the product — most often diesel — to stay in the tank.

Square Robot saves those vast weeks of time, but perhaps even more importantly, says Prasad, “We’re avoiding emissions being released into the atmosphere.”

With its key location in Houston, Square Robot has worked with most of the major names in the energy world, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and Crist’s former employer, Phillips 66.

The latest robot is the SR-3, which is currently being tested in Houston. Curious webwatchers can see its progress on Square Robot’s website. Unlike the flagship SR-1, the new robot boasts a side launcher that allows it to be completely immersed in a tank before being launched.

But perhaps the most exciting thing about Square Robot’s 15-human Houston office is its test tank. There, potential partners can see exactly what the company’s ingenious creation can do. Square Robot will participate in ILTA, the International Operating Conference & Trade Show, which takes place from May 21-24. On the 24th, the company will host an open house from noon to 3 p.m. to allow potential users to see the SR-3 in action in the 42-foot-long test tank.

Square Robot will complete its hundredth tank inspection in May. It is also growing beyond the oil and gas world to include work with the power industry and was recently selected as a finalist in the Incubatenergy Lab Start Up program. This is one robot that we will happily allow to take over formerly all-too-human responsibilities.

Square Robot has a team of 15 in Houston. Photo courtesy of Square Robot

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This article originally ran on InnovationMap.

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Greentown and partners name 10 startups to carbontech accelerator

new cohort

The Carbon to Value Initiative (C2V Initiative)—a collaboration between Greentown Labs, NYU Tandon School of Engineering's Urban Future Lab and Fraunhofer USA—has announced 10 startup participants to join the fifth cohort of its carbontech accelerator.

The six-month accelerator aims to help cleantech startups advance their commercialization efforts through access to the C2V Initiative’s Carbontech Leadership Council (CLC). The invitation-only council consists of corporate and nonprofit leaders from organizations like Shell, TotalEnergies, XPRIZE, L’Oréal and others who “foster commercialization opportunities and identify avenues for technology validation, testing, and demonstration,” according to a release from Greentown

“The No. 1 reason startups engage with Greentown is to find customers, grow their businesses, and accelerate impact—and the Carbon to Value Initiative delivers exactly that,” Georgina Campbell Flatter, CEO of Greentown, said in a news release. “It’s a powerful example of how meaningful engagement between entrepreneurs and industry turns innovation into commercial traction.”

The C2V Initiative received more than 100 applications from 33 countries, representing a variety of carbontech innovations. The 10 startups chosen for the 2025 fifth cohort include:

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Sora Fuel, which integrates direct-air capture with direct conversion of the captured carbon into syngas for production of sustainable aviation fuel
Brooklyn-based Arbon, which develops a humidity-swing carbon-capture solution by capturing CO₂ from the air or point-source without heat or pressure
New York-based Cella Mineral Storage, which works to develop subsurface mineralization technology with integrated software, enabling new ways to sequester CO2 underground
Germany-based ICODOS, which helps transform emissions into value through a point-source carbon capture and methanol synthesis process in a single, modularized system
Vancouver-based Lite-1, which uses advanced biomanufacturing processes to produce circular colourants for use in textiles, cosmetics and food
London-based Mission Zero Technologies, which has developed and deployed an electrified, direct-air carbon capture solution that employs both liquid-adsorption and electrochemical technologies
Kenya-based Octavia Carbon, which develops a solid-adsorption-based, direct-air carbon capture solution that utilizes geothermal heat
California-based Rushnu, which combines point-source carbon capture with chemical production, turning salt and CO2 into chlorine-based chemicals and minerals
Brooklyn-based Turnover Labs, which develops modular electrolyzers that transform raw, industrial CO2 emissions into chemical building blocks, without capture or purification
Ontario-based Universal Matter, which develops a Flash Joule Heating process that converts carbon waste such as end-of-life plastics, tires or industrial waste into graphene

The C2V Initiative is based on Greentown Go, Greentown’s open-innovation program. The C2V Initiative has supported 35 startups that have raised over $600 million in follow-on funding.

Read about the 2024 cohort here.

CenterPoint gets go-ahead for $2.9B upgrade of Houston grid

grid resiliency

Texas utility regulators have given the green light for Houston-based CenterPoint Energy to spend $2.9 billion on strengthening its Houston-area electric grid to better withstand extreme weather.

The cost of the plan is nearly $3 billion below what CenterPoint initially proposed to the Public Utility Commission of Texas.

In early 2025, CenterPoint unveiled a $5.75 billion plan to upgrade its Houston-area power system from 2026 through 2028. But the price tag dropped to $2.9 billion as part of a legal settlement between CenterPoint and cities in the utility’s service area.

Sometime after the first quarter of next year, CenterPoint customers in the Houston area will pay an extra $1 a month for the next three years to cover costs of the resiliency plan. CenterPoint serves 2.9 million customers in a 12-county territory anchored by Houston.

CenterPoint says the plan is part of its “commitment to building the most resilient coastal grid in the country.”

A key to improving CenterPoint’s local grid will be stepping up management of high-risk vegetation (namely trees), which ranks as the leading cause of power outages in the Houston area. CenterPoint says it will “go above and beyond standard vegetation management by implementing an industry-leading three-year trim cycle,” clearing vegetation from thousands of miles of power lines.

The utility company says its plan aims to prevent Houston-area power outages in case of hurricanes, floods, extreme temperatures, tornadoes, wildfires, winter storms, and other extreme weather events.

CenterPoint says the plan will:

Improve systemwide resilience by 30 percent
Expand the grid’s power-generating capacity. The company expects power demand in the Houston area to grow 2 percent per year for the foreseeable future.
Save about $50 million per year on storm cleanup costs
Avoid outages for more than 500,000 customers in the event of a disaster like last year’s Hurricane Beryl
Provide 130,000 stronger, more storm-resilient utility poles
Put more than 50 percent of the power system underground
Rebuild or upgrade more than 2,200 transmission towers
Modernize 34,500 spans of underground cables

In the Energy Capital of the World, residents “expect and deserve an electric system that is safe, reliable, cost-effective, and resilient when they need it most. We’re determined to deliver just that,” Jason Wells, president and CEO of CenterPoint, said in January.

Solidec partners with Australian company for clean hydrogen peroxide pilot

rare earth pilot

Solidec has partnered with Australia-based Lynas Rare Earth, an environmentally responsible producer of rare earth oxides and materials, to reduce emissions from hydrogen peroxide production.

The partnership marks a milestone for the Houston-based clean chemical manufacturing startup, as it would allow the company to accelerate the commercialization of its hydrogen peroxide generation technology, according to a news release.

"This collaboration is a major milestone for Solidec and a catalyst for sustainability in rare earths," Yang Xia, co-founder and CTO of Solidec, said in the release. "Solidec's technology can reduce the carbon footprint of hydrogen peroxide production by up to 90%. By combining our generators with the scale of a global leader in rare earths, we can contribute to a more secure, sustainable supply of critical minerals."

Through the partnership, Solidec will launch a pilot program of its autonomous, on-site generators at Lynas's facility in Australia. Solidec's generators extract molecules from water and air and convert them into carbon emission-free chemicals and fuels, like hydrogen peroxide. The generators also eliminate the need for transport, storage and permitting, making for a simpler, more efficient process for producing hydrogen peroxide than the traditional anthraquinone process.

"Hydrogen peroxide is essential to rare earth production, yet centralized manufacturing adds cost and complexity," Ryan DuChanois, co-founder and CEO of Solidec, added in the release. "By generating peroxide directly on-site, we're reinventing the chemical supply chain for efficiency, resilience, and sustainability."

The companies report that the pilot is expected to generate 10 tons of hydrogen peroxide per year.

If successful, the pilot would serve as a model for large-scale deployments of Solidec's generators across Lynas' operations—and would have major implications for the high-performance magnet, electric vehicles, wind turbine, and advanced electronics industries, which rely on rare earth elements.

"This partnership with Solidec is another milestone on the path to achieving our Towards 2030 vision," Luke Darbyshire, general manager of R&I at Lynas, added. "Working with Solidec allows us to establish transformative chemical supply pathways that align with our innovation efforts, while contributing to our broader vision for secure, sustainable rare earth supply chains."

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