Texas CEO Magazine

Texas Weekly Deal Highlights

Texas CEO Magazine — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 01:30:37 GMT

Happy Sunday!

Here’s a supply-chain problem you may not have heard about: more than 80% of America’s military working dogs come from Europe. Now Dallas biotech entrepreneur Ben Lamm and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey have launched Warhound, a company using genetic engineering and defense technology to develop healthier, more capable working dogs. The new company debuted this week with $200 million in funding and a $1.2 billion valuation.

That deal and many more are in this week’s roundup, which follows a deal analysis from our friends at pH Partners.

Texas Weekly Deal Highlights

Texas CEO Magazine — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 00:30:41 GMT

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Happy Sunday!

Here’s a prediction to ponder this Sunday evening, from Fort Worth investor Chris Powers:

Ambitious? Sure. But Texans aren’t known for thinking small. Dallas, Austin, Houston, and San Antonio have a pretty remarkable assemblage of benefits. Do you agree?

This week’s roundup of Texas deals and acquisitions follows a pH Partners analysis. Look out for a $200 million raise for ICON and the sale of one of Austin’s best-known tech companies.

LateralCare Raises $11.3M to Scale Revenue Cycle AI

Southlake, TX-based LateralCare reported $11.3M sold in a SAFE financing in an October 6 filing, with 16 investors participating. Together with a July 2024 raise of roughly $2.9M, the company has raised about $14.2M. Participating investors and valuation were not publicly disclosed.

Founded in 2023 by Sowri Krishnan, LateralCare is built on the belief that healthcare operations need governed AI agents that reason through complexity, with humans in the loop where it matters. Its flagship platform, revenue alai, is an AI-native, closed-loop system that spans claims, billing, contract management, denials, audit, and financial insight, with human oversight built in by design. The company says the platform delivers a 99% clean claims rate, up to 70% lower administrative expenses, and up to 80% better AR days. In February, it named William Reau CEO and Mani Nedunchelian CTO to scale the platform.

LateralCare has spent 2026 assembling channels. In April, it partnered with the Colorado Hospital Association to help Colorado hospitals strengthen revenue performance and reduce administrative strain. In May, Whitley Penn announced it will introduce revenue alai to eligible advisory clients. In September, the platform became available for purchase and deployment through Microsoft Marketplace.

The raise comes at an opportune time as revenue cycle management undergoes a structural shift. According to McKinsey & Company’s April 2026 Healthcare Insights Report, expanding regulatory mandates and intensifying payer friction are compressing margins and slowing cash realization for providers. In its 2025 survey of healthcare leaders, 57% said improving denial management and appeals is a priority, and 56% said the same of documentation and coding accuracy, making them the two highest-priority functions.

Clinical denials alone result in write-offs averaging 2.63% of net patient service revenue. The pressure is showing up in claims data: Experian Health reports that 41% of providers now see denial rates above 10%. Yet only 14% of providers use AI to address denials, even though 69% of those that do report better claims outcomes. The need is acute and adoption is still early, which is the gap LateralCare is built to address.

Capital is responding. MarketsandMarkets projects the global RCM market growing from $73.6B in 2026 to $132.1B by 2031, a 12.4% CAGR. Rock Health reports that digital health startups raised $7.4B across 244 deals in the first half of 2026. Investors are backing platforms that automate coding, prior authorization, and denial prevention rather than single-task billing tools. Candid Health raised a $120M Series D led by Sixth Street Growth in July 2026, which the company said tripled its valuation from a 2025 Series C.

Commure raised $70M in May 2026 from General Catalyst at a $7.0B post-money valuation. Adonis raised a $40M Series C led by Quadrille Capital in March 2026 and reports 4x revenue growth in 2025.

pH Partners’ take: payer-provider friction is driving demand for RCM, and capital is following automation that is measurable and auditable. Payers are deploying AI toward the revenue cycle at a faster rate than providers. This raises the stakes for providers to adopt automation to protect cash conversion cycles, turning the revenue cycle from a back-office function into embedded healthcare infrastructure.

It also raises the bar for entrants. Technical differentiation is harder to sustain when anyone can build with AI. LateralCare’s raise provides runway to scale revenue alai and demonstrate that its governed, human-in-the-loop approach can set it apart in a growing but increasingly competitive sector. Its payer contract digitization and channel-led distribution through hospital associations, advisory firms, and Microsoft Marketplace support that thesis. The next proof points will be an expanding customer base, verified outcomes, and implementation that repeats across partners without heavy customization.

—Analysis by pH Partners

pH Partners is an Austin-based boutique investment bank focused on Healthcare, Technology, and Consumer markets. Learn more at phpartners.com.

Deal Activity

Austin

ICON, a developer of 3D-printing construction systems for homebuilding and large-scale structures, raised $200M in a Series D co-led by Baillie Gifford and funds managed by BlackRock, with participation from Tiger Global, Norwest, Capital Factory, CAZ Investments, and others.
RapidCanvas, a provider of managed enterprise AI deployment services for production-scale workloads, raised $29M in a Series B led by Vertex Ventures SEA & India with participation from Hitachi Ventures, Accel, Peak XV Partners, Valley Capital Partners, and others. $52.5M raised to date.
Expressable, a provider of virtual speech therapy services for children and adults, reported $25.5M raised in an equity offering from nine undisclosed investors, according to an SEC filing dated October 15. Approximately $74.02M raised to date.
Flux Steel Holdings, a producer of grain-oriented electrical steel for power transformer cores, reported $15.91M raised in an equity offering from 45 undisclosed investors, according to an SEC filing dated October 14. $15.91M raised to date.
Homa, a developer of an AI-powered homebuying platform returning agent commissions to buyers, raised $5M in a Seed led by Quiet Capital with participation from Restive Ventures and Cambrian Ventures. $5M raised to date.
Tesoro, a provider of a retail-funded rewards platform for free-to-play game publishers, reported $1.1M raised through SAFEs from six undisclosed investors, according to an SEC filing dated October 13. Approximately $6.56M raised to date.

Greater Texas Market

Zippy (Dallas), a technology-enabled lender specializing in manufactured home financing, raised $20M in a Series C from Saluda Grade, the sole investor. The funding will support expansion beyond the company’s existing 27-state footprint and the introduction of new lending products.
Kutlerri (Stafford), a developer of AI agents for restaurant catering sales and cost reduction, raised $4M from Narahari Investments. $4M raised to date.

M&A Activity in Texas

Austin

Bumble (Austin), the dating and social networking company, agreed to be acquired by Ithaca Holdings in an all-cash transaction valued at $1.3B. Shareholders will receive $6.05 per share, a 138% premium to the company’s October 9 closing price. The transaction will take Bumble private.
Tiger Pistol (Austin), a developer of digital advertising automation software for franchises, enterprises, and marketing resellers, was acquired by Robots & Pencils, an applied AI engineering firm. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Revir Technologies (Austin), a developer of AI-powered digital evidence management software for law enforcement and public safety agencies, was acquired by Daily Journal Corporation, a California-based publishing and technology company. The transaction closed October 13, and financial terms were not disclosed.
Canworks (Austin), a digital printer of aluminum beverage cans, announced its acquisition by Milwaukee-based private equity firm Mason Wells. The company will retain its Austin headquarters and existing management. Financial terms were not disclosed. The acquisition was announced October 14 but closed in late 2025.
Flex (Austin), a global electronics manufacturing and technology company, completed its previously announced $4.4B acquisition of EPC Power, a California-based maker of power conversion systems for data centers and electrical grids, on October 14.

Greater Texas Market

Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings (San Antonio), an outdoor advertising company, completed its previously announced $6.2B acquisition by Mubadala Capital on October 14. The transaction takes Clear Channel private, ending its listing on the New York Stock Exchange.
Elisity (Dallas), a cybersecurity company specializing in Zero Trust network security, agreed to be acquired by quantum computing company IonQ in an all-stock transaction valued at up to $1.3B, including contingent consideration.
Allied Trust Insurance Company (Texas-domiciled), a property and casualty insurer, agreed to be acquired by Porch Reciprocal Exchange, managed by Porch Group, as part of a $200M transaction that also includes Allied Trust’s managing general agent and captive reinsurer.
MEI Industrial Solutions (Coppell), a provider of industrial equipment moving, rigging, storage, and installation services, agreed to be acquired by 26North Partners from Olympus Partners. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Argano (Plano), a business operations and technology consultancy, acquired Oktana Corporation, a Salesforce consulting firm specializing in data, AI, and digital engineering. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Omega Holdings (Decatur), an automotive parts distributor, acquired O2 COOL Manufacturing, a Texas-based manufacturer of heating and air-conditioning systems for buses, trucks, and specialty vehicles. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Lewis & Ellis (Dallas), an actuarial consulting and insurance services firm, announced its acquisition of Alan Gray LLC and A.G. Risk Management from Premia Holdings. Financial terms were not disclosed. The acquisition was announced October 14 but closed August 31.
Ara Partners (Houston), a private equity and infrastructure investment firm, acquired a majority interest in Pacific Ag, an agricultural logistics company that collects and processes crop residues for use in animal feed and other products. Financial terms were not disclosed.

See you next week!

—Mason & Joel

This edition was supported by Malik Osumah.

Subscribe to Joel Trammell’s CEO Newsletter, Managing the Future.

Texas Weekly Deal Highlights

Texas CEO Magazine — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 01:30:56 GMT

Happy Sunday!

The Texas Stock Exchange picked up a big name this week.

Dillard’s moved its stock listing from the New York Stock Exchange to Dallas-based TXSE on October 5, ending nearly 60 years of trading in New York. The Arkansas-based department store chain gives the new exchange a high-profile early adopter as Texas continues its push to become a major financial center.

This week’s deals are below. Look out for an $8B move by SpaceX that could put it in competition with the big wireless carriers, a $4.2B acquisition in the Eagle Ford region, and a $775M investment in a Houston company supplying power to energy-hungry AI data centers.

Tiny Health Raises $33M to Build Clinician Trust Through Published Evidence

Austin-based Tiny Health announced a $33 million oversubscribed Series B on September 29, led by B Capital, with participation from existing investors including Spero Ventures. Total funding now stands at $46 million, and B Capital’s Nick Whitehead joins the board. No valuation was disclosed, though CEO Cheryl Sew Hoy said it is well above the Series A. Tiny Health is pursuing clinical adoption through published evidence rather than regulatory clearance, and the proceeds are directed accordingly: clinical research, expansion of its provider channel, an AI engine called TinyAI, and increasing headcount.

Founded in 2020, Tiny Health launched in 2022 with a gut microbiome test for babies and mothers built around the first 1,000 days of life, when the microbiome is most malleable. Adult testing has since surpassed pediatric volume, and the company says it serves nearly 200,000 customers. Revenue was not disclosed, but Sew Hoy said it has more than doubled each year, and Tiny Health ranked No. 208 on this year’s Inc. 5000 with 1,624 percent three-year growth.

The company positions itself as a wellness product. “We are a wellness test,” Sew Hoy told Crunchbase News, “not a diagnostic.” Insurance does not cover it, and the test identifies which microbes are present without establishing what causes a person’s symptoms. Staying outside FDA clearance and reimbursement costs Tiny Health payer revenue, but it lets the company sell cash-pay and through practitioners without a regulatory timeline. It also leaves the category without a regulatory gate, which makes published evidence one of the few ways to separate one microbiome test from another.

Tiny Health says it is the only gut microbiome company with a published interventional randomized controlled trial. The 2025 study in Pediatric Allergy and Immunology found that a microbiome-based intervention cut the odds of eczema by 83 percent in infants born by C-section. A second trial is underway, research is expanding into IBD, menopause, GLP-1s and oncology drug response, and a $5 million Microbiome Research Program will give outside researchers access to its testing and data.

The practitioner channel is where that evidence is intended to drive adoption. Powered by Tiny, which sells testing to healthcare providers and to companies that build it into their own services, grew fourfold last year and counts Fullscript, Superpower and Mayo Clinic’s Executive Health and Longevity Programs among dozens of partners, reaching more than 6,000 practitioners. The channel grew from the consumer side: customers took results to their doctors, and doctors began asking Tiny how to read them. Whitehead, the round’s lead investor at B Capital, said clinicians consulted in diligence rated Tiny’s test highest. Viome, by comparison, pairs testing with its own supplements, while Tiny Health supplies testing to other platforms.

The strategy depends on whether the evidence extends to adults. The published trial is in infants, while adult testing now exceeds pediatric volume, so the adult research the company has planned matters most. Watch whether the second trial replicates the eczema result, whether adult studies show outcomes and not only associations, and whether Powered by Tiny becomes a larger share of revenue, a figure the company has not disclosed. If the evidence stays pediatric while volume stays adult, the wellness label will limit how far the clinical channel can go.

Analysis by the pH Partners Team

pH Partners is an Austin-based boutique investment bank focused on Healthcare, Technology, and Consumer markets. Learn more at phpartners.com

Deal Activity

Austin

Nous Research, a developer of open-source AI models and agents for enterprise deployment, raised $90M in a Series B led by Robot Ventures with participation from NVIDIA, M12, Samsung Electronics, Union Square Ventures, and others. Approximately $160M raised to date.

Texas Weekly Deal Highlights

Texas CEO Magazine — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 01:31:59 GMT

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Happy Sunday!

When Texas officially kicked off Manufacturing Week on Friday, we were already off to a head start. In the previous few days, Austin-based Saronic broke ground on its $3 billion-plus Port Alpha shipyard in Brownsville, while down in Conroe, Hertha Metals raised $133.65 million to scale production of high-purity iron and steel. If US manufacturing is over, nobody told Texas.

This week’s deal activity follows pH Partners’ analysis of Symplr’s recent debt restructuring.

Symplr Secures $175 Million in Debt Restructuring

Symplr, a Houston-based enterprise software platform serving healthcare providers, reportedly secured commitments in September from existing investors Clearlake Capital Group and Charlesbank Capital Partners to contribute roughly $175 million in preferred equity as part of a debt restructuring. The move follows months of pressure on the company’s debt, which traded at distressed levels during 2026 as AI disruption concerns weighed on software credit broadly. In July, Moody’s downgraded the company, citing elevated restructuring risk.

The restructuring would create several new layers in the capital stack. Clearlake and Charlesbank will defer interest on the new junior paper to conserve cash. Separately, second-lien lenders, including Ares Capital, plan to provide $103.5 million of fresh money, structured as a first-out, second-lien loan that ranks ahead of the existing second-lien debt.

With its roughly $1.2 billion first-lien loan quoted near 71 cents on the dollar, Symplr would extend first-lien maturities by three years in exchange for higher interest rates. Existing second-lien lenders would receive the same rate increase, with some interest added to principal rather than paid in cash. The restructuring follows years of expansion, funded in part by equity capital from its 2022 recapitalization, which provided access to about $1.6 billion, including investor rollover. Acquisitions, including the $75 million purchase of nurse scheduling platform Smart Square from AMN Healthcare in 2025, expanded Symplr’s portfolio across credentialing, staffing, provider directories, clinical communications, quality and supply chain software.

Symplr has announced new AI capabilities within that portfolio, including scheduling, contract review and vendor access. Whether that product strategy is translating into retention or margin improvement is not something the company has disclosed publicly.

From pH Partners’ perspective, this is a credit story, not a demand story, but it is a useful marker for how buyers and lenders are now pricing serial acquirers in healthcare software. Sponsors writing fresh checks to defend a capital structure, rather than providing primary growth capital, signal that integration risk and AI substitution risk are now being underwritten more harshly across the sector, not just at Symplr.

For sponsors and management teams sitting on similarly assembled platforms, the next financing conversation, whether with a lender, a growth investor or a strategic acquirer, will increasingly turn on demonstrated platform cohesion and unit-level economics rather than logo count. PE credit committees are already applying that diligence bar, and strategic buyers and family offices are likely to bring similar scrutiny.

—Analysis by pH Partners

pH Partners is an Austin-based boutique investment bank focused on Healthcare, Technology, and Consumer markets. Learn more at phpartners.com.

Sources

Bloomberg, republished by Mint — restructuring terms, loan pricing and Moody’s downgrade

Clearlake — 2022 investment, available equity capital and acquisition strategy

AMN Healthcare — Smart Square sale and $75 million purchase price

Symplr — Phynd acquisition and provider directories

Symplr — Halo Health acquisition and clinical communications

Symplr — AI and automation capabilities at ViVE 2026

Austin

Homeward, a provider of cash-offer and bridge financing for homebuyers and sellers, raised $120M in a Series D led by Saluda Grade with participation from Parker89, Continental General Insurance, LiveOak Ventures, Javelin Venture Partners, and others. $360M raised to date.
Tiny Health, a provider of at-home gut and vaginal microbiome testing, raised $33M in a Series B led by B Capital Group with participation from Pari Passu Venture Partners, Denver Ventures, Black Opal Ventures, Pave Health Ventures, and others. $46M raised to date.
artius.iD, a developer of identity verification and authentication software for enterprises, raised $4M in a deal from undisclosed investors.

Greater Texas Market

Hertha Metals (Conroe), a producer of high-purity iron and steel for domestic rare-earth magnet manufacturers, raised $133.65M in a Series A co-led by Khosla Ventures and Doerr Capital with participation from Niterra, Toyota Ventures, Pear, Clean Energy Ventures, and others. More than $150.65M raised to date.

M&A Activity in Texas

Austin

Mitratech Legal acquired BotDojo, an AI-native software startup whose technology will be integrated into Mitratech’s legal technology platform. Terms were not disclosed.
CertifID acquired Closinglock, an Austin provider of escrow management, secure payments and fraud-prevention technology for real estate closings. Terms were not disclosed.

Greater Texas Market

Flowco Holdings (Houston) acquired Lifting Solutions Energy Services, a Canadian provider of artificial-lift products and services, for approximately $113M.
Zhone Technologies (Plano) acquired Tellabs Access, a provider of optical LAN and broadband access networking technology. Terms were not disclosed.
Hawkins (Dallas–Fort Worth) acquired the assets of Eagle Labs, a Texas manufacturer and distributor of water-treatment products. Terms were not disclosed.
Caterpillar (Irving) agreed to acquire John Fabick Tractor Company, a Caterpillar dealership network serving Wisconsin and portions of Missouri, Illinois and Michigan. Terms were not disclosed.

See you next week!

—Mason & Joel

This edition was supported by Malik Osumah.

Subscribe to Joel Trammell’s CEO Newsletter, Managing the Future.

Texas Weekly Deal Highlights

Texas CEO Magazine — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 01:31:44 GMT

Happy Sunday!

Before we get to this week’s deals, an invitation for the chief executives out there: I am holding my final CEO Masterclass of the year November 11–13 and have a few spots left.

Come join the November cohort at Texas CEO Ranch, connect with fellow CEOs, and go into the holiday season with your plan for 2027 in place. You can download the CEO Masterclass brochure or email me at joel@xpertloop.ai to secure your spot.

A recent CEO Masterclass cohort. It’s “powerfully simple, and simply powerful—a toolkit for the newly-minted and veteran leader alike,” says Drew Bagot, founder & managing partner of Serata Capital.

After this analysis from pH Partners, we will get to this week’s activity, which includes a San Antonio racing-fuel company buying a distillery and getting into the spirits business.

Texas Power Stack: Branch Energy, Mazama Energy & Licube

Three tangentially related financings tied to Texas this week ($33M, $135M, and roughly $8.55M sold) land on three different rungs of the same ladder: generation, bridge storage, and materials. Investors are making three separate bets on the same premise: that AI-driven electricity demand is outrunning grid buildout faster than new supply, storage, or materials capacity can be added.

Houston-based Branch Energy announced a $33M Series B on Sept. 15, led by Piva Capital and Clean Energy Ventures, with Active Impact Investments, Whitecap Venture Partners, and existing backers Prelude Ventures, Zero Infinity Partners and Inovia Capital. The round follows a $10.8M Series A in August 2024.

Two days later, Mazama Energy, based in Frisco with a project in Oregon, announced an oversubscribed $135M Series B led by Centaurus Capital and Doerr Capital. ConocoPhillips and Shell Ventures joined the round, while Khosla Ventures and Gates Frontier returned.

Austin-based Licube, a Greentown Houston member, filed a Form D on Sept. 15 reporting $8.55M sold toward a $12M offering from 26 investors. The financing is separate from a $6M seed round announced in April 2025.

The companies are addressing different parts of the same infrastructure challenge. Branch is a bridge-power bet, deploying batteries at existing sites in days instead of waiting through a multi-year interconnection queue. Mazama is a generation bet, targeting baseload power from superhot rock and 15 MWe per well by 2027. Licube is a supply-chain bet focused on domestic high-purity lithium processing.

The scale of the underlying demand helps explain the activity. EIA figures show developers planning 12.9 GW of utility-scale battery storage additions in Texas in 2026, 53% of the planned U.S. total. ERCOT’s April 2026 preliminary forecast puts regional demand at roughly 367,790 MW by 2032, although that includes proposed loads that may not all be built.

The trend is familiar to pH through its multiple years of work advising ZincFive on its late-stage capital raises as it heads towards a SPAC transaction (announced in mid-2026). Branch and Mazama are selling into new or bridge capacity: more electrons, delivered faster. ZincFive’s nickel-zinc chemistry solves a different problem: safe, immediate backup power within a data center environment that is increasingly stressed by AI computing demands.

The macro cadence is worth monitoring: whether AI-driven data-center buildout keeps accelerating and fueling capital formation through the entire power stack. Additional AI-adjacent IPOs will continue to test investors’ appetite to fund infrastructure growth stories with additional capital, while regulatory moves on interconnection, permitting and large-load rules could accelerate or choke off demand. Rate moves, credit availability and hyperscaler capex guidance will also signal whether this pace of raises is durable or cresting.

—Analysis by pH Partners

pH Partners is an Austin-based boutique investment bank focused on Healthcare, Technology, and Consumer markets. Learn more at phpartners.com.

This material is for general information and educational purposes only. Information is based on data gathered from what we believe are reliable sources. It is not guaranteed as to accuracy, does not purport to be complete and is not intended to be used as a primary basis for investment decisions.

Greater Texas Market

Island (Dallas), a developer of an enterprise browser for secure workplace application access, raised $400M in a Series F led by Evolution Equity Partners with participation from Insight Partners, Prysm Capital, Coatue Management, Alta Park Capital, and others. Approximately $1.13B raised to date.
Symplr (Houston), a provider of healthcare operations software for provider data and workforce management, secured a $175M preferred equity investment from Clearlake Capital Group and Charlesbank Capital Partners as part of a broader debt restructuring.

CEO Interview: Chase Idleman of Arlow

Joel Trammell — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 13:18:42 GMT

Every week, roughly a Dallas Cowboys stadium’s worth of Americans turn 65.

Chase Idleman is quick to reassure those of us nearing that milestone that 65 is “the new 35.” But he also thinks we’re nowhere near ready for the caregiving demands that are coming.

Idleman is founder and CEO of Arlow, a company that combines AI-powered tools with human advisors …

Texas Weekly Deal Highlights

Texas CEO Magazine — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 01:30:32 GMT

Happy Sunday!

Texas has long been the biggest energy producer in the U.S…. but that’s not stopping us from producing more.

Two of this week’s biggest raises went to Texas companies in the power business. Frisco’s Mazama Energy raised $135 million to scale its superhot-rock geothermal technology, which aims to tap much hotter underground resources for round-the-clock power. And Houston’s Branch Energy raised $33 million for its containerized battery systems, designed to get power to commercial sites and AI infrastructure without waiting years for new grid capacity.

That’s $168 million this week for two different approaches to squeezing more power out of the energy capital of the country. Find more on that in this week’s full activity below.

Also this week: A Houston-area school district approved a tax incentive for Tesla’s proposed $10.1 billion solar manufacturing plant in Fort Bend County, though Tesla has not yet selected the Texas site.

Beacon Behavioral Partners Acquires DFW-Based Prime Psychiatry

Beacon Behavioral Partners, a physician-led network of behavioral health providers, announced on September 8 the acquisition of two new partners in North and Central Texas: Prime Psychiatry and Invicta Healthcare. The transaction collectively adds seven new locations to Beacon’s platform, deepening its network in Dallas-Fort Worth to 11 partnered locations, while providing new entry into the Austin market.

Prime, led by Dr. Efosa Airuehia, is a leading multidisciplinary provider in North and Central Texas, offering counseling and interventional psychiatry, including transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), medication management and psychotherapy. Prime also brings established payer contracts across major commercial insurers allowing Beacon to skip months of credentialing and integrate the platform immediately rather than build out network access from the ground up. Terms were not disclosed.

The transaction highlights Beacon’s owner, Latticework Capital Management, and its approach of buying platforms and building them through steady partnerships. Latticework took a controlling stake in Beacon in December 2020, and Resolute Capital Partners joined as a co-investor two years later. Since then, Beacon has added dozens of practices across the South, Midwest and Texas. This allows operations to unify while allowing partner physicians to retain clinical control. Rob Jardeleza became Beacon’s chief executive earlier this year, with founder Sean Wendell moving into the role of executive chairman.

Latticework had previously exited Xpress Wellness Urgent Care in 2024 to Goldman Sachs Alternatives after executing a buy-and-build strategy on the platform since 2019.

Beacon’s latest transaction is an example of a broader market shift in healthcare services while total deal count across physician practice management (PPM) remains down in 2026. Buyers are increasingly focused on value-added capital deployment over grow-at-all-costs expansion, as behavioral health has driven valuation performance across PPM for interventional treatments like TMS and Spravato through expanding coverage. Prime’s combination of interventional psychiatry, medication management, and psychotherapy, already operating under established payer relationships, is exactly the kind of built-out infrastructure buyers are paying for rather than assembling from scratch. Universal Health Services closed on the purchase of Talkspace for $835MM, valuing the virtual therapy company at roughly 53x EBITDA and providing a clear referral pathway between inpatient and virtual behavioral care.

Demand from investors into behavioral health remains strong as well. pH Partners recently acted as exclusive financial advisor to Sound Minds Behavioral Health, a leading provider of outpatient behavioral therapy, medication management and PHP/IOP services across Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey, on a $26.5MM capital raise. The transaction enabled Sound Minds to pursue M&A and expand its interventional psychiatry capabilities. The raise points to the same investor logic driving Beacon and UHS: capital is following operators building multi-modal platforms that combine reimbursement-backed interventional treatment with existing outpatient infrastructure.

For patients across North Texas, the change means new backing for practices already in high demand.

—Analysis by pH Partners

pH Partners is an Austin-based boutique investment bank focused on Healthcare, Technology, and Consumer markets. Learn more at phpartners.com.

Austin

Eve Security, a developer of runtime security software governing enterprise AI agent behavior, raised $4.5M in a Seed led by Run Ventures with participation from Blu Venture Investors, Dreamit Ventures, LiveOak Ventures, and Tau Ventures. $7.5M raised to date.

Greater Texas Market

Persona AI’s humanoid robots are intended for heavy industrial use. The company raised $65.36M.

Mazama Energy (Frisco), a developer of superhot rock geothermal systems for utility-scale carbon-free power, raised $135M in a Series B co-led by Centaurus Capital and Doerr Capital with participation from ConocoPhillips, Gates Frontier, H. Barton Asset Management, Jeff and Marieke Rothschild Foundation, and others. $171M raised to date.
Persona AI (Houston), a developer of industrial humanoid robots for welding, fabrication, and heavy manufacturing, raised $65.36M in a Seed from undisclosed investors. $65.36M raised to date.
Branch Energy (Houston), a provider of containerized battery storage systems delivering on-site power for commercial customers, raised $33M in a Series B co-led by Piva Capital and Clean Energy Ventures with participation from Active Impact Investments, Inovia Capital, Prelude Ventures, Whitecap Venture Partners, and others. $53.19M raised to date.
Licube (Houston), a producer of ultra-high-purity lithium compounds for battery, semiconductor, and fusion applications, raised $8.55M in a deal from undisclosed investors. $14.55M raised to date.

M&A Activity in Texas

Plains All American Pipeline agreed to acquire Silver Creek Midstream’s Powder River Basin assets, including 1.2M barrels of storage capacity.

GDT (Dallas), a provider of data center, networking, cloud, cybersecurity, and other IT solutions, agreed to be acquired by UK-based Softcat for an enterprise value of approximately $1.05B. GDT will become a wholly owned Softcat subsidiary while retaining its name, leadership, and workforce. The transaction is expected to close by the end of Q1 2027, subject to regulatory approval.
Plains All American Pipeline (Houston) agreed to acquire Silver Creek Midstream’s Powder River Basin assets from affiliates of Tailwater Capital and The Energy & Minerals Group for approximately $585M in cash. The assets include roughly 600 miles of crude-oil pipelines, 1.2 million barrels of storage capacity, and a 49% interest in the Powder River Gateway joint venture.
Addus HomeCare (Frisco) agreed to acquire the personal care division of Dallas-based AccentCare for approximately $275M in cash. The acquired business serves about 13,700 clients across 10 states and generates approximately $280M in annualized revenue. The transaction excludes AccentCare’s hospice and home-health operations and its New York personal-care business.
Watermark Insights (Austin), a provider of institutional effectiveness software used by colleges and universities, agreed to be acquired by Main Capital Partners from TCV. Financial terms were not officially disclosed. Watermark employs more than 300 people and serves approximately 1,500 higher-education institutions.
C.H. Guenther & Son (San Antonio), a food manufacturer backed by Pritzker Private Capital, acquired House-Autry Mills, a North Carolina-based producer of breadings, coatings, seasonings, and other dry mixes. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Prism Electric (Garland), an electrical contractor serving data center, healthcare, manufacturing, aviation, and other commercial markets, was acquired by Loenbro, a portfolio company of Kohlberg & Company. Financial terms were not disclosed. Loenbro described the transaction as the largest acquisition in its history.
BKV Corporation completed its acquisition of Barnett Shale upstream, midstream, and carbon-capture assets in North Texas. The acquired portfolio includes approximately 117,000 net acres, 1,000 operated wells, 340 miles of gas gathering lines, a 180 MMcf/d gas plant, and an operating carbon-capture project. Financial terms were not disclosed.

See you next week!

—Mason & Joel

This edition was supported by Malik Osumah.

Subscribe to Joel Trammell’s CEO Newsletter, Managing the Future.

Texas Weekly Deal Highlights

Texas CEO Magazine — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 01:30:15 GMT

Happy Sunday!

Texas has spent years collecting corporate headquarters. Now it’s collecting stock listings, too. This week, the new Texas Stock Exchange landed its first corporate primary listings, with Energy Transfer, Sunoco, SunocoCorp and USA Compression Partners announcing plans to move over from the New York Stock Exchange in October. Together, the four companies represent nearly $100 billion in market value.

It’s a nice backdrop for another busy week of Texas dealmaking, including a $3 billion round for The Boring Company, a $500 million Series A for Austin’s Fab2 and a healthy slate of M&A across the state.

This week’s deal list follows analysis of a recent Fortrea acquisition that includes a lab in Austin, a pharmacology unit in San Antonio, and a biospecimen storage facility in Pflugerville.

Texas Weekly Deal Highlights

Texas CEO Magazine — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 01:30:35 GMT

Happy Sunday!

Our friends at YTexas report that Texas has drawn headquarters relocations from 10 different states so far in 2026, plus one from New Zealand. So while California companies tend to get the attention, the migration to Texas is coming from all over the map. Check out the full list of 2026 relos so far here.

This week’s deal roundup follows a closer look from pH Partners at Fort Worth-based Healthcare Shares and its physician-backed venture model.

Healthcare Shares: Fund Raise

It was recently announced that Healthcare Shares (Fort Worth), a physician-backed venture capital firm that invests in early-stage healthcare startups, completed a raise for their fund, bringing their recent total to $2.5M. As reported on their website, Healthcare Shares reports ~20 portfolio companies across digital health, diagnostics, life science and care delivery. Their current community consists of over 2,000 members, including physicians, healthcare executives, and researchers.

Healthcare Shares’ stated mission is to “balance delivering financial returns with improving clinical outcomes, reducing healthcare costs, and improving patient and clinician satisfaction.” Their strategy is rightly premised on the observation that early-stage healthcare companies need more than just capital; they need access to healthcare KOLs with the relevant expertise and network.

With Texas’ continued emergence as a healthcare frontier for both companies and

investors, this is another welcome development. Texas is home to more than 6,100 biotech and life sciences firms and ranks third in the country for total biotech-related establishments, as reported by AngelMatch. In 2025, Texas’ healthcare sector had an aggregate transaction value of about $1.78B, the third-largest sector in the state behind tech/media/telecom ($4.18B) and energy/utilities ($2.38B), according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. In July 2026, Texas came in second nationally for VC dollars raised by companies, at $2.37B, behind only California.

While several of these metrics point to continued investor momentum in Texas, they are still skewed towards later-stage companies in the energy and tech space rather than new entrants in healthcare. So there is an opportunity for Healthcare Shares or other physician-investor networks to emerge and provide real value to life science companies in Texas.

However, it must be noted that this is by no means a new model and comes with its challenges.

Whether it is physician communities like Doximity and Sermo or investment-focused networks like the former AngelMD, the challenge is always generating enough engagement to make it useful to everyone involved. For Healthcare Shares, the task will not only be to bring high-quality companies to their physician and KOL network for investment, but to extract meaningful time, insights, connections, pilot projects and commercialization support from said network for their portfolio companies.

We look forward to following the progress here with Healthcare Shares and are excited to see more creative models of investment emerging here in Texas for healthcare and life science companies.

—Analysis by the pH Partners Team

pH Partners is an Austin-based boutique investment bank focused on Healthcare, Technology, and Consumer markets. Learn more at phpartners.com.

Austin

HiddenLayer, a provider of security software for agentic, generative, and predictive AI applications, raised $100M in a Series B led by Delta-v Capital, with participation from Ten Eleven Ventures, Morgan Stanley, M12 and Booz Allen Ventures. Approximately $156M raised to date.
Light, a provider of an API platform enabling businesses to offer branded electricity plans, raised $46M in a Series A led by Matrix, with participation from Activate Capital, Spark Capital, Mischief, Gigascale Capital, MCJ and BoxGroup. Approximately $60M raised to date.
Bevel, a provider of AI-powered personal insurance brokerage and property-claims services, announced a $6M seed round backed by SHAKTI, Resolute Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners and individual investors. $6M announced to date.

Greater Texas Market

Critical Materials Group (Talpa), a developer of modular, automation-ready production systems for energetic materials used in defense manufacturing, announced a $10.3M seed round led by Overmatch Ventures, with participation from Victory Six Advisors and Fulcrum Ventures. $10.3M announced to date.

M&A Activity in Texas

Flex (Austin) agreed to acquire EPC Power, a California-based provider of power-conversion technology for data centers and grid applications, for $4.4B. EPC Power will become part of Flex’s Cloud and Power Infrastructure segment, which Flex plans to spin off as an independent public company in 2027.
SLB (Houston) agreed to acquire Kelvion, a German manufacturer of cooling and thermal-management equipment, for $3.4B in cash and the assumption of approximately $700M in debt. The acquisition expands SLB’s data-center infrastructure business.
Diversified Energy agreed to acquire Birch Permian Holdings, a Permian Basin oil and gas producer, from affiliates of Elliott Investment Management for approximately $1.8B. The transaction includes approximately 46,000 net acres, 480 net wells and related gathering, processing and water infrastructure.
Solaris Energy Infrastructure (Houston) acquired Omega Foundation Services, a provider of engineering and heavy-civil construction services for data centers and other infrastructure projects. Solaris paid approximately $101M in cash, assumed $28M in debt and leases, and issued approximately 3.6 million shares.
Stewart Information Services (Houston) acquired ProTitleUSA and DocSolutionUSA, providers of title, mortgage-document and due-diligence services. Terms were not disclosed.
Stewart Information Services (Houston) also acquired Tower Title, a national provider of telecommunications-focused title services. Terms were not disclosed.
Shell Oil Products US (Houston) agreed to acquire the remaining 67% of Tri Star Energy, a Nashville-based convenience-store operator and fuel distributor. The transaction will add 320 company-owned retail locations and supply agreements with 552 dealer-owned locations. Terms were not disclosed.
Salute (Austin) agreed to acquire T5 Operations, the data-center operations division of T5 Data Centers. The combined business will manage more than 15 gigawatts of data-center capacity across more than 150 markets. Terms were not disclosed.
Fortrea agreed to acquire Worldwide Clinical Trials’ Early Phase Services division, including a bioanalytical laboratory in Austin, a 200-bed clinical pharmacology unit in San Antonio and a biospecimen-storage facility in Pflugerville. Terms were not disclosed.
Comstock Resources (Frisco) signed a letter of intent under which Azerbaijan’s state-owned SOCAR would acquire minority interests in Comstock’s Haynesville assets and Pinnacle Gas Services for $1.65B in cash. The parties are targeting a definitive agreement by October 31; the proposed transaction has not yet been finalized.

See you next week!

—Mason & Joel

This edition was supported by Malik Osumah.

Subscribe to Joel Trammell’s CEO Newsletter, Managing the Future.

Texas Weekly Deal Highlights

Texas CEO Magazine — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 01:30:36 GMT

Happy Sunday!

Austin picked up another No. 1 this week. A new LendingTree analysis named it America’s top “boomtown” for the third straight year, with Austin leading the country’s 50 largest metros in housing growth and the increase in new business applications. Houston, Dallas and San Antonio also landed in the top 15. The ranking uses 2023–2024 federal data, so it’s a backward-looking snapshot, but a pretty good one of the growth that continues to shape the Texas business landscape.

This week’s deals follow a look at Happy Health’s recent $75M raise, plus happenings in the wider category of sleep-tracking wearables.

CEO Interview: Kjirstin Breure of HydroGraph

Joel Trammell — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 14:05:23 GMT

Kjirstin Breure, CEO of HydroGraph

Graphene has been called a wonder material for more than 20 years, with potential uses in everything from longer-lasting batteries and corrosion-resistant coatings to lighter aircraft components, stronger concrete, and more durable industrial materials. The harder problem has been making enough high-quality graphene, co…

Texas Weekly Deal Highlights

Texas CEO Magazine — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:30:46 GMT

Happy Sunday!

Since voters created the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas in 2007, more than a billion dollars of its funding has gone toward recruiting scientists to the state, 362 of them so far across 20 institutions. On Wednesday the board approved twelve more recruitment grants as part of $35 million in awards, with three of the new arrivals headed to UT Austin. Their specialties run from liver and brain cancer to AI-driven lab-on-a-chip detection. The same meeting created a new advisory committee on artificial intelligence.

Private capital spent the week in the same area. Roughly $185 million of the $242 million raised across Texas went to health and life sciences, most of it to Happy Health, which came out of stealth with $75 million behind an FDA-cleared ring that diagnoses sleep apnea in three nights. Astromech in Dallas took $20 million at a $3.8 billion valuation, nearly double where it stood in March, on a plan to forecast where biology breaks before it does.

This week’s full roundup follows an update from pH Partners on another deal in this sector: TYBR Health’s recent raise.

TYBR Health: $30M Series A Financing

Last month, TYBR Health raised a $30M Series A, co-led by Vensana Capital and Mutual Capital Partners. The round brings total funding to approximately $38.7M and will support commercialization and clinical studies for B3 GEL, its FDA-cleared hydrogel for protecting soft tissue after orthopedic surgery.

TYBR received FDA 510(k) clearance in June 2025, began an Australian clinical study in September, and completed its first U.S. procedure in January 2026. This is therefore less a product development round and more a bet that TYBR can turn early surgeon interest into repeated use while building evidence.

B3 GEL is a collagen-based extracellular matrix hydrogel that degrades within 30 days. It is applied around tendons, ligaments, and muscles at the end of surgery, creating a temporary barrier that prevents them from reattaching to nearby tissue as they heal, which can restrict movement, prolong healing, and require another surgery.

B3 GEL was cleared based on substantial equivalence to existing products, principally fellow Texas based company Alafair Biosciences’ VersaWrap, rather than a controlled human trial showing better functional outcomes. TYBR’s current clinical work must now demonstrate that improved range of motion in animal models translates into less stiffness, shorter rehabilitation, or fewer repeat procedures in patients.

The commercial differentiation is also narrower than “flowable hydrogel” alone. Alafair received clearance for its own flowable product, VersaCoat, in July 2025. TYBR’s advantage will need to come from easier application, stronger outcomes, and broader indications that its collagen-based extracellular matrix produces a meaningful benefit.

The investor group also provides some useful strategic context. Vensana led a $20M investment in Artelon in 2023 to fund commercial growth, clinical research, and new indications before the company was acquired by Stryker. Former Artelon CEO, Aaron Smith, now serves as an independent director at TYBR, and Jeff Tyber, who has built and sold several orthopedic device businesses, joined the board earlier this year. Their involvement gives TYBR a team that has already taken similar products from early commercialization through strategic acquisition.

TYBR’s positioning goes beyond creating a physical barrier for healing; it may also influence the inflammatory response that causes excessive scar formation, giving B3 GEL both a mechanical and potential biological role in healing. This combination can differentiate B3 GEL from existing barriers and hydrogels. That advantage remains largely supported by preclinical evidence, making human clinical outcomes the next important proof point to look for.

—Analysis by the pH Partners Team

pH Partners is an Austin-based boutique investment bank focused on Healthcare, Technology, and Consumer markets. Learn more at phpartners.com.

Austin

Happy Health, a developer of an FDA-cleared smart ring for at-home sleep apnea diagnosis, raised $75M in a Series A co-led by ARCH Venture Partners and OpenLoop. $135M raised to date.
Network Bio, a developer of disease-specific AI models trained on human tissue and clinical data, raised $50M in a launch financing led by Section 32 with participation from Thiel Bio, Founders Fund, Breyer Capital, Blue Venture Fund, JSL Health Capital, and others. $50M raised to date.
Boom, a provider of an AI-native leasing and screening platform for rental property managers, raised $15M in a Series A led by S3 Ventures with participation from Mischief, Starting Line, Company Ventures, and Gilgamesh Ventures. $20.50M raised to date.
Synthefy, a developer of foundation models for structured and time-series numerical data, raised $6.50M in a Seed led by Wing Venture Capital with participation from Samsung Next, Canonical, Haystack, and Lightscape. $6.50M raised to date.

Greater Texas Market

Astromech (Dallas), a developer of AI models that predict evolutionary and genomic change in living systems, raised $20M at a $3.8B valuation in a deal led by Bob Nelsen with participation from PEAK6 Investments, Builders VC, CAZ Investments, and NeoGenesis Capital. $60M raised to date.
McGregor Bancshares (McGregor), the holding company for TFNB, a provider of community banking, lending, and trust services in Central Texas, raised $15.45M in a deal from undisclosed investors placed by Hillworth Bank Partners. $66.57M raised to date.
Ours Privacy (Houston), a provider of a HIPAA-compliant customer data platform for healthcare marketers, raised $15M in a Series A co-led by Lightbank and Health Velocity Capital with participation from Rock Health, TMV, Lakehouse, Switch Ventures, Starfire Ventures, GreyMatter, and others. $20M raised to date.
ProbablyMonsters (Fort Worth), a developer of AAA video games through a family of independent studios, raised $10M in the first close of a $50M offering from an undisclosed investor. $260M raised to date.

See you next week!

—Mason & Joel

This edition was supported by Malik Osumah.

Subscribe to Joel Trammell’s CEO Newsletter, Managing the Future.

Texas Weekly Deal Highlights

Texas CEO Magazine — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:30:45 GMT

Happy Sunday!

A quieter week on the Texas deal front, with a short but interesting list. What did cross the wire kept up a theme we’ve been following all summer, with Valstad building AI-driven robotics for shipbuilding and AGent Energy developing distributed power plants for commercial and industrial sites.

More on that following a deeper look at Austin’s INNOVOTEX, whose $4M raise we reported last week.

Texas Weekly Deal Highlights

Texas CEO Magazine — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 01:30:34 GMT

Happy Sunday!

Base Power’s $1 billion Series C last October was one of the biggest Texas deals of the past ten years. This week, the company did it again, raising another $1 billion in a Series D that values it at $13 billion, roughly four times what it was worth ten months ago.

The company’s model is an interesting one. Base Power installs a home battery for a low upfront fee and a monthly membership, but it keeps ownership of the hardware, linking thousands of these batteries into a single fleet it can dispatch to the grid when demand spikes. (And we all remember what can happen when demand spikes.)

Customers get backup power when the lights go out, and Base Power gets a distributed power plant it can sell into the Texas market. This week it also began manufacturing its own battery, Base Core, at an Austin factory now turning out thousands of units a month.

That model puts Base Power in the middle of the Texas energy conversation. The state’s grid has strained for years to keep up with a growing population and increasingly extreme weather, and the demand coming from data centers and electrification will only add to the pressure. Base Power is betting that part of the answer lies in a decentralized network of home batteries that can store power and feed it back when the grid runs short.

This week’s full roundup follows an update from pH Partners on Function Health, whose celeb-backed raises we have covered in the past.

Function Health: $450M Non-Dilutive Growth Financing

Late last month, General Catalyst (GC) committed $450M to Function Health through its Customer Value Fund, the largest check the health-testing platform has taken to date. This raise does not result in a new valuation for Function Health. Instead, General Catalyst gets repaid out of the revenue its capital helps generate, effectively underwriting Function’s customer acquisition engine rather than pricing the company itself.

The $450M comes from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund (CVF), GC’s non-dilutive vehicle that pre-funds a company’s sales and marketing spend and gets repaid, on a capped basis, only from the revenue that spend generates, functioning more like revenue-based financing than equity. This round comes eight months after Function’s $298M Series B, led by Redpoint Ventures at a $2.5B valuation (Nov. 2025), and follows two 2026 tuck-ins: Getlabs (nationwide mobile phlebotomy/at-home blood draw network, acquired April 2026) and SuppCo (supplement verification platform with a TrustScore system covering 35,000+ products, acquired May 2026). Total capital raised to date exceeds $800M since Function’s 2023 beta launch.

CVF only underwrites companies that have already proven product-market fit and predictable CAC payback making it a tool for scaling a working model. The investor is effectively underwriting the efficiency of Function’s customer acquisition engine, and by choosing CVF over another equity round also lets Function keep scaling without putting a fresh price tag on the company at a moment when the category’s comps are getting noisier.

GC has used CVF to finance 40+ companies, deploying nine figures a month; other recent CVF deals include $1B for Prenetics’ IM8 (financing up to 70% of marketing spend) and $360M for Musely. On Function’s side: 500,000+ members, 100M+ completed lab tests since 2023, and a membership price that already dropped from $499 to $365/year at the Series B.

Function’s language stays consumer-wellness even as its acquisitions steadily assemble clinical-grade infrastructure: imaging (Ezra), logistics (Getlabs), and an intervention layer (SuppCo). The positioning bet is that owning the full stack (measure, deliver, act) is the differentiator for this rapidly growing category. That’s a contrast with rival Superpower, which has competed mainly on price ($199/year vs. Function’s $365).

The nearest comps are Superpower ($51M raised total, sub-$300M valuation, priced down to $199/year), Prenuvo (full-body MRI, ~$70M raised), and Neko Health. Function has made three acquisitions in 15 months, all vertically stacking rather than horizontally scaling, a category-consolidator approach rather than a multi-player field. Worth watching: CVF is becoming a repeat financing tool for consumer subscription health and wellness leaders with proven CAC economics (Function, IM8) rather than a one-off, a sign the category’s biggest players may increasingly skip traditional equity rounds altogether.

Because GC only gets repaid if the financed CAC spend converts, the thesis will depend on whether Getlabs and SuppCo turn from press-release synergy into real retention and upsell revenue over the next few quarters. Watch for membership growth past 500K, a disclosed revenue run-rate, and whether the Superpower litigation resolves in a way that sets a category-defining precedent on what counts as a “biomarker.”

—Analysis by the pH Partners Team

pH Partners is an Austin-based boutique investment bank focused on Healthcare, Technology, and Consumer markets. Learn more at phpartners.com.

Austin

Base Power, a provider of home battery systems and distributed energy services, raised $1B in a Series D co-led by Ribbit, Addition, Valor Equity Partners, and JPMorganChase with participation from Altimeter, D1 Capital Partners, and others. $2.28B raised to date.
ClearJet, a provider of middle-mile air freight infrastructure for e-commerce parcel delivery, raised $24.28M in a deal from undisclosed investors. $38.63M raised to date.
PulseForge, a developer of photonic thermal processing equipment for semiconductor and electronics manufacturing, raised $16M in a deal from undisclosed investors. $16M raised to date.
INNOVOTEX, a developer of texaphyrin-based oncology therapeutics targeting platinum-resistant solid tumors, raised $4M in a Seed led by Keiretsu Forum. $4.83M raised to date.

Greater Texas Market

Mariana Minerals (Houston/San Francisco), a developer of software-driven mines and refineries producing copper, lithium, and nickel, raised $310M in a Series B led by Khosla Ventures with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, BHP Ventures, Breakthrough Energy, and others. $393.53M raised to date.
Texas Stock Exchange (Dallas), a provider of a national securities exchange for equities listing and trading, raised $27.90M in a deal from undisclosed investors. $434.12M raised to date.
Critical Materials Group (Talpa), a manufacturer of energetic materials for domestic defense munitions production, raised $7.80M in a Seed from undisclosed investors. $7.80M raised to date.

See you next week!

—Mason & Joel

This edition was supported by Malik Osumah.

Subscribe to Joel Trammell’s CEO Newsletter, Managing the Future.

Texas Weekly Deal Highlights

Texas CEO Magazine — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 01:30:58 GMT

Happy Sunday!

The biggest Austin deal this week was that of Function, the preventive-health platform that gives members lab panels, full-body imaging, and a mission to help you “live 100 healthy years.”

The company brought in $450 million from General Catalyst, though it wasn’t a conventional equity round. The money comes from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund, which bankrolls customer acquisition and gets repaid out of the revenue those customers generate. Function’s $2.5 billion valuation from last November holds, and no equity was diluted.

Function has now raised more than $800 million since 2023 and spent the past year acquiring its way into at-home blood draws, imaging, and supplements.

It was a good week for health diagnostics across the board: Houston’s Simbryo raised $5.25 million for fertility testing, and Austin’s Throne Science raised $10 million for a sensor that tracks your gut health from… inside your toilet.

This week’s full roundup follows a deal update from pH Partners on yet another diagnostic company whose latest deal we reported last month.

Market Update: Baylor Genetics

Baylor Genetics, a precision diagnostics company specializing in genetic testing to guide clinical decision-making in rare disease, pediatric, and reproductive health, announced the closing of a $50M Series B financing round on July 15, 2026. The round was led by Decheng Capital, alongside key strategic and institutional partners H.U. Group Holdings and Baylor College of Medicine, with participation from additional institutional venture investors.

This latest financing is believed to value Baylor Genetics at $491MM, a 1.35x step-up from its previous Series A round completed in March 2025, and underscores growing investor appetite for rare disease genomics as both a clinical diagnostic tool and an emerging data asset for the broader life sciences ecosystem.

This financing round reflects a broader market shift: investors and payers are increasingly aligned on the value of precision diagnostics for rare-disease patients, while partnerships between academic medical centers and industry are building durable, monetizable data assets that extend well beyond the clinic.

pH Partners Perspective

Companies like Baylor Genetics are helping close the diagnostic gap by deploying advanced sequencing technologies such as whole exome sequencing (WES), whole genome sequencing (WGS), and RNA sequencing to shorten what is often referred to as the diagnostic odyssey — the years-long path many rare disease patients travel before receiving an accurate diagnosis that can inform treatment decisions. Patients with the same clinical diagnosis often have different underlying genetic variants.

Genomic data applications across life sciences keep expanding, and the category is growing faster than it is being defined. Consensus estimates put growth in the high-teens CAGR through 2030, driven by biopharma’s shift toward biomarker-driven R&D.

Beyond clinical metrics, Baylor Genetics illustrates how academic-institution partnerships can commercialize genomic and clinical data for biopharma R&D and create a scalable model for pairing nonprofit research IP with outside capital. The academic research infrastructure underlying these partnerships also generates the clinical utility evidence that increasingly informs payer coverage decisions for WES/WGS. Examples of this broader model include Geisinger’s decade-long collaboration with Regeneron and Mayo Clinic’s 2026 data partnership with Merck. Baylor Genetics’ own joint venture, formed in 2015, was an early instance of it.

Broader Context

While venture funding across diagnostics remained under pressure through Q1 2026, according to PitchBook data, capital continues to find operators with established payer coverage and clinical adoption — exactly the profile Baylor Genetics has built.

Baylor Genetics was founded as a joint venture in 2015 between H.U. Group Holdings, a diversified laboratory and diagnostics company headquartered in Japan, and Baylor College of Medicine. It builds on nearly 50 years of genetics leadership at Baylor College of Medicine, tracing back to the 1978 founding of its Department of Molecular and Human Genetics.

As Baylor Genetics CEO Kengo Takishima put it in a recent LinkedIn post, “The promise of a genome-first healthcare system has never been more compelling.”

This latest funding round demonstrates that Baylor Genetics is positioned not merely as a diagnostic provider, but as a critical data engine driving precision medicine.

—Analysis by the pH Partners Team

pH Partners is an Austin-based boutique investment bank focused on Healthcare, Technology, and Consumer markets. Learn more at phpartners.com.

Austin

Function Health, a developer of a preventive health platform offering lab testing and full-body medical imaging, raised $450M in a deal led by General Catalyst. $807.60M raised to date.

Texas Weekly Deal Highlights

Texas CEO Magazine — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 01:30:15 GMT

Happy Sunday!

One of the biggest stories in Texas business this week involves Saronic, the Austin defense startup that builds autonomous naval vessels. The company announced it will build Port Alpha at the Port of Brownsville, which the company and Gov. Abbott are calling the largest shipyard in the country. The project represents more than $3 billion in investment and as many as 10,000 jobs over the next decade, with the state adding an $80 million grant to help land it.

Saronic, valued at $9.25 billion after a $1.75 billion round in March, is the same company whose autonomous Corsair vessel recently helped rescue two U.S. soldiers after their helicopter went down near the Strait of Hormuz.

More on this week’s deals below. First, our friends at pH Partners1 break down Frozen One’s new seed round and the surge of investor interest in high-protein frozen treats.

Frozen One’s $5.75M Series Seed: Market Update

Frozen One, a high-protein ice cream brand, recently closed a $5.75 million series seed led by Brand Foundry Ventures. Following its first institutional raise of $2 million in April 2026, Frozen One’s latest round closed roughly four months later, was nearly three times the size, and came alongside the addition of a new Chief Operating Officer and SVP of Sales.

The seed round was led by Brand Foundry Ventures, an Austin-based consumer fund with approximately $200 million in AUM. Brand Foundry’s partners include Bonobos and Trunk Club co-founder Brian Spaly, and its portfolio includes Graza, OLIPOP, and Warby Parker. Supernatural Ventures, which led Frozen One’s prior round, also participated. Alongside the capital, the company named Dave Valenza-Frost, formerly COO at Van Leeuwen, as COO, and Ashley Ross, who built commercial operations at Onnit ahead of its acquisition, as SVP of Sales.

The size of the round, combined with two operator-caliber hires, is expected to fund manufacturing growth and retail distribution expansion, building on a retail footprint that has already demonstrated consumer demand for the product.

Continued Institutional Investment in High-Protein Concepts

Frozen One’s raise is one of several recent early-stage financings in the high-protein frozen and snacking category. Protein Pints, a Grand Rapids-based competitor, has raised approximately $2 million across seed and grant-based capital while expanding into more than 8,000 retail doors, including Target, Kroger, and Albertsons. Smearcase, marketed under the “FroCo” brand, has raised capital to support retail growth and has reached roughly 1,000 doors. David Protein, which entered the ice cream category most recently as an extension of its existing protein bar business, raised a $10 million seed round in 2024 before a $75 million Series A in 2025 led by Greenoaks, and has since used its scale to secure access to a key better-for-you fat ingredient. Taken together, these rounds indicate that investor interest in high-protein frozen treats extends beyond a single company.

The global protein ice cream market was valued at $2.5 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $3.8 billion by 2030, a 6.2% CAGR, with North America accounting for roughly 45% of category revenue. That is durable growth, but it is a mid-single-digit-CAGR category rather than a breakout one, which places relatively more weight on Frozen One’s ability to win share within a defined market rather than benefit from outsized category expansion.

Frozen One leads with a specific nutritional specification, 40 grams of protein per pint at 380 to 430 calories, rather than a broader “better-for-you” or low-calorie claim. This positioning differs from brands that add a protein claim to an already-established better-for-you story, and reflects an emerging split in the category between protein-first brands (Frozen One, Protein Pints) and better-for-you brands adding protein as a secondary attribute. A specification-led approach can serve as a clear differentiator, though nutritional specs of this kind are generally replicable by competitors once proven out at retail.

Strategic M&A Context

Capstone Partners’ latest Food M&A Update found that 67.7% of branded food acquisition targets so far in 2026 carry better-for-you, high-protein, international, or sustainability positioning, as legacy conglomerates divest slower-growing brands to fund category-relevant bolt-on acquisitions.

Looking ahead, a useful indicator to track will be whether Frozen One’s expanded retail footprint, approximately 2,300 locations including its April 2026 nationwide Target rollout across roughly 1,464 stores, converts into sustained retail velocity through the next two to three reset cycles, rather than initial placement alone. Continued velocity through the holiday reset and into 2027 line reviews would position Frozen One as a plausible bolt-on candidate for a strategic acquirer already active in better-for-you M&A. This is a data point pH Partners will continue to monitor as part of our coverage of the category.

—Analysis by the pH Partners Team

Austin

Brevy Care, a developer of software that helps family caregivers access Medicaid reimbursements, raised $4.77M in a deal with participation from GreyMatter Capital. $4.92M raised to date.
Neutral Ground, a provider of factory construction material sourcing for real-estate developers, raised $1.15M in a seed round from undisclosed investors. $1.15M raised to date.

Greater Texas Market

Cardinal Data Power (Dallas), a developer of gigawatt-scale data centers powered by on-site generation, raised $70M in a Series A led by Hood River Capital Management with participation from Empery Digital. $70M raised to date.
TYBR Health (Houston), a developer of hydrogel systems that protect healing tissues after orthopedic surgery, raised $30M in a Series A co-led by Vensana Capital and Mutual Capital Partners with participation from Neovate Capital Partners. $38.70M raised to date.
Resolute Grid (Rockwall), a producer of American-made transformers and hardware for electrical transmission systems, raised $18.21M in a deal with participation from Stage 1 Ventures, Wave Function Ventures. $18.21M raised to date.
Brava (Carrollton), a developer of hidden orthodontic braces placed behind the teeth, raised $5.04M in a deal from undisclosed investors. $51.24M raised to date.
Piranha Holdings (Argyle), a holding company formed in Texas in 2026, raised $1.25M in a seed round from undisclosed investors. $1.25M raised to date.

See you next week!

—Mason & Joel

This edition was supported by Malik Osumah.

Subscribe to Joel Trammell’s CEO Newsletter, Managing the Future.

pH Partners is an Austin-based boutique investment bank focused on Healthcare, Technology, and Consumer markets. Learn more at phpartners.com.

Texas Weekly Deal Highlights

Texas CEO Magazine — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 18:58:05 GMT

Austin’s startup funding is on pace for a record year. ATX companies raised about $5 billion in the first half of 2026, according to Dealroom’s running tally for the Greater Austin Chamber. That puts this year on track to reach roughly $9.9 billion, a 23% jump over 2025 and nearly ten times what Austin raised just five years ago!

Texas is also becoming the country’s data center capital. Crusoe and Lancium announced a 1-gigawatt AI data center campus in Childress, up in the Panhandle, a 270-acre site built to power a single hyperscale customer, with construction set to start next quarter. It’s one more entry in a building spree that has state grid operator ERCOT fielding requests for some 439 gigawatts of future power, roughly five times the all-time peak demand on the Texas grid. That surge showed up in this week’s deals too: Coppell-based Csquare, a colocation and interconnection provider, raised $1.05 billion in its IPO, the biggest deal on this week’s list.

With that, let’s get to this week’s deal activity:

Austin

TerraFirma, a developer of semi-autonomous heavy equipment for construction projects, raised $100M in a Series A led by Kleiner Perkins with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Glade Brook Capital Partners, BANNER VC, Saga Ventures, and others. $115M raised to date.

Texas Weekly Deal Highlights

Texas CEO Magazine — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 01:30:23 GMT

Two of every three public companies looking to leave Delaware this year want to set up shop in Texas instead. New data from Georgeson's early 2026 proxy season review shows that of the 17 shareholder proposals seeking to reincorporate out of Delaware, 11 (65%) named Texas as the destination, and nearly all that have gone to a vote have passed. The trend has a nickname now: "DExit."

The departures are driven in large part by frustration with Delaware's Court of Chancery, long the default venue for corporate law, whose recent rulings companies increasingly see as unpredictable. Tesla decamped for Texas in 2024 after a Delaware judge voided Elon Musk's pay package, and Coinbase followed, with its chief legal officer publicly citing the erosion of legal certainty in Delaware.

Texas has courted the exodus, standing up a dedicated business court and codifying friendlier governance rules. The companies in this week's roundup are mostly new and private, but the throughline is the same: more and more, when a business decides where to plant its flag, the answer is Texas.

With that, let’s get to this week’s deal activity:

Austin

Haven Advisors Holdings raised $10M in a Seed from undisclosed investors. $10M raised to date.
Legible, a developer of an AI-native policy intelligence platform for government affairs professionals, raised $3.5M in a deal led by Acadian Software. $3.5M raised to date.
BistroCat, a developer of an automated wet cat food feeder for pet owners, raised $2.06M in a deal from undisclosed investors. $4.11M raised to date.

Greater Texas Market

Venus Aerospace (Houston), a developer of rotating detonation rocket engine technology for defense and space propulsion systems, raised $91M in a Series B led by Mercury Fund with participation from Airbus Ventures, America’s Frontier Fund, Auxilium Partners, BroadVision Group, and others. $139.28M raised to date.
Hephae Energy Technology (Spring), a developer of ultra-high-temperature robotics for next-generation geothermal drilling, raised $17.8M in a Series A led by Susquehanna Sustainable Investments and Underground Ventures with participation from Alfa8, Baruch Future Ventures, Centaurus Capital, Elemental Impact, and others. $24.15M raised to date.
Otovo (Houston), a provider of AI-driven home energy services spanning solar, storage, and EV charging, raised $7.25M in a deal led by EIC Rose Rock with participation from Energy Innovation Capital. $7.25M raised to date.
Adaptive Insurance (Bee Cave), a provider of parametric specialty insurance products addressing climate and weather risks, raised $5M in a deal led by Congruent Ventures and Peconic Partners with participation from Connecticut Innovations, Firemark Ventures, Montauk Capital, Room & Pillar, and others. $10M raised to date.
Frontlands (Dallas), a provider of asset-backed lines of credit secured by mineral and royalty rights, raised $4M in a deal from undisclosed investors. $65.43M raised to date.
The Boardroom Mastermind (Grapevine), a real estate education company operating peer groups for investors, raised $1.73M in a Seed from undisclosed investors. $1.73M raised to date.
Climb Group (Dallas), a provider of Databricks-focused data and AI consulting services for enterprises, raised $1.4M in a Seed from undisclosed investors. $1.4M raised to date.
Skybound Medtech (Houston), a developer of dual-use medical technologies for space medicine and defense applications, raised $1.25M in a Seed from undisclosed investors. $1.25M raised to date.

See you next week!

—Mason & Joel

This edition was supported by Malik Osumah.

Subscribe to Joel Trammell’s CEO Newsletter, Managing the Future.

Texas Weekly Deal Highlights

Texas CEO Magazine — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:31:22 GMT

According to a report by ABJ this week, Austin is cleaning up when it comes to state incentives for semiconductor manufacturing and design.

Companies in the capital and its environs account for 82% of the $413 million in grants announced to date by the Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund (TSIF). Much of that chunk comes from Samsung's $250 million award for a fabrication plant in Taylor, but it also includes a vibrant group of Austin-based chip designers, materials suppliers, workforce programs, and research facilities.

Up in Dallas, the startup known as the Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE) is poised for its big debut tomorrow. “Y’all Street” will begin with a phased rollout, advancing from limited tests to broader trading activity over this month. The exchange plans to make corporate listings available by the fourth quarter.

With that, let’s get to this week’s deal activity:

Austin

Wander, a provider of luxury vacation home rentals with hotel-grade amenities, raised $64.1M in a Series B led by QED Investors and Fifth Wall with participation from Snow Leopard Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Authentic Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and others. $222.26M raised to date.

Texas Weekly Deal Highlights

Texas CEO Magazine — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 01:31:10 GMT

It’s World Cup time, and Texas has a big part of the action. Dallas and Houston are hosting a total of 16 matches, with major economic impact for the host cities.

According to the Texas Economic Development Corporation, North Texas will welcome 100,000 visitors on each match day, which is expected to generate about $1.5 to $2.1 billion. Houston expects to see 500,000 total and generate $1.5 billion. We also get to see international travelers experience Texas for the first time, from Buc-ee’s to Terry Black’s to Tito’s.

But deal activity didn’t take a break for the games. Here is this week’s activity:

Austin

Radiology Partners, a provider of physician-led radiology practice management services for hospitals and health systems, raised $268.51M in a deal from undisclosed investors. $6,812.38M raised to date.
Ollin Biosciences, a developer of bispecific antibody treatments for retinal eye diseases, raised $156.25M in a Series B led by ARCH Venture Partners and TCG Crossover Management with participation from Andreessen Horowitz. $256.25M raised to date.
Nuclein, a developer of rapid point-of-care PCR diagnostic systems for infectious diseases, raised $20.36M in a convertible debt from undisclosed investors. $63.97M raised to date.
Solar Simplified, a provider of community solar farm subscriptions for homeowners and renters, raised $1.50M in a Seed from undisclosed investors. $1.50M raised to date.

Greater Texas Market

mCards (Houston), a provider of branded payment card and rewards solutions for businesses, raised $11.13M in a deal from undisclosed investors. $19.98M raised to date.
Long Angle (Dallas), a provider of community and investment resources for high-net-worth individuals, raised $7.05M in a Series A led by Collins Resources. $7.05M raised to date.
Cambrian (Houston), a developer of blockchain data oracle infrastructure for institutions and AI agents, raised $6.00M in a Seed led by Polychain Capital and Franklin Resources with participation from Alumni Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and Others. $11.90M raised to date.
RE-OPS (Cross Roads), a provider of AI-powered procurement marketplace solutions for multifamily real estate operators, raised $2.44M in a deal from undisclosed investors. $5.84M raised to date.
nuKudo (San Antonio), a developer of cybersecurity workforce training and talent development programs, raised $1.78M in a Seed from undisclosed investors. $1.78M raised to date.
Plotsy (Dallas), a developer of AI-powered streaming entertainment for independent fiction stories, raised $1.50M in a Seed led by Pier 88 Investment Partners. $1.50M raised to date.

See you next week.

—Joel & Mason

This edition was supported by Malik Osumah.

Subscribe to Joel Trammell’s CEO Newsletter, Managing the Future.