Let’s catch up with the latest innovation news in Texas.
—Austin’s Capital Factory has announced a new partnership with The Cannon in Houston, one that will offer companies with space at Capital Factory reciprocal membership at the Houston coworking space, which opened last year. The Cannon also started Cannon Ventures to bring together angel investors interested in funding startups. Capital Factory has been starting to do more work throughout the state, including establishing a post in Dallas last year.
—Hypergiant Space Age Solutions, the commercial services unit of Hypergiant, has acquired Black Pixel, a software development studio in Seattle. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, according to a press release. The Austin-based Hypergiant makes machine learning software, has offices in Dallas and Houston, and has customers such as TGI Fridays, Schlumberger, and others. The statement said more than 100 million people use Black Pixel’s software through customers such as ESPN, Twitter, and The New York Times, among others.
—Olono, an Austin maker of enterprise software for sales departments, has raised $3 million of a planned $5.26 million funding round. The startup, which was known as Nexd until last year, was founded in 2015 and previous investors include Bill Block, formerly of Silicon Laboratories and Tivoli Systems, and Sailpoint co-founder Kevin Cunningham, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
—Bractlet, a cleantech startup based in Austin, has raised $1.17 million in new funding of a planned $1.5 million round. Braclet was part of the Surge Accelerator, a Houston cleantech startup program that was closed in 2016.
—Tennis star Serena Williams was in Plano, TX, last weekend, to introduce her clothing collection, called Serena, at Neighborhood Goods, according to Dallas Innovates. At the pop up, Williams said she is an investor in the Dallas-based retailing company, which was founded in May. Neighborhood Good’s first storefront opened in October.
