A robot rolling down the road bringing butter, milk, and eggs.

That’s on the horizon for San Antonio-based H-E-B. Texas’ largest grocer announced Wednesday plans to use an autonomous van to deliver groceries in San Antonio.

The pilot program will roll out later this year.

Customers in Olmos Park, north of downtown San Antonio, will be able to order from the Olmos Park H-E-B and get their groceries delivered in an autonomous van. It’s the first test market for the new driverless delivery technology.  Initially, the van will have a driver but will eventually become completely driverless, according to H-E-B.

H-E-B is not the first grocer to turn to driverless technology to deliver milk, eggs, bread, and ground beef. Last December, Kroger, the nation’s largest grocery chain, rolled out autonomous delivery in Arizona. It is working with Nuro, based in Mountainview, Calif., according to the Associated Press.

And Kroger’s Nuro driverless vans are coming to Houston this year, according to a story in The Verge.

In a blog post on the H-E-B website, the grocery company reported that “people will continue to play a major role throughout the company’s business.” H-E-B, with 116,000 employees, is the largest private employer in Texas.

 “Our success starts with our people, who provide exceptional hospitality and drive us to open more engaging stores that offer a world-class shopping experience,” Craig Boyan, H-E-B President, said in a blog post. “We’re committed to winning through people and hiring more people, and we’re adding necessary skills to become both a better tech company and even stronger brick-and-mortar retailer.”

H-E-B is partnering with Udelv, a California-based company that creates Autonomous Delivery Vehicles, which are outfitted with temperature-controlled compartments for fresh, frozen and dry goods. The autonomous vans also travel at city street and highway speeds.

“Companies like H-E-B are taking the first steps to explore the benefits autonomous deliveries can bring to their customers and employees,” Daniel Laury, CEO of Udelv, said in a blog post . “As the most loved retailer in Texas, H-E-B is an amazing partner for Udelv as we scale our Autodeliv^TM service and work to make deliveries faster and safer. We look forward to serving the people of Texas with Newton, our second-generation ADV.”

H-E-B is beefing up its digital efforts and this pilot is part of that effort. The company recently opened a new Digital Technology Hub in East Austin. That came about after it bought Favor, an on-demand digital delivery service last year. It was the first acquisition in the company’s 114-year history.

H-E-B also offers H-E-B Curbside, which allows customers to order their groceries in advance and pick them up at the store and H-E-B Home Delivery, which delivers groceries to a customer’s house. And H-E-B has created H-E-B Go, a mobile solution that allows people to scan and pay for their items with their phones.

 “At H-E-B, we continue to evaluate and utilize innovative technologies in all parts of our business,” said Paul Tepfenhart, Senior Vice President of Omnichannel and Emerging Technologies at Central Market and H-E-B. “As a leading digital-retail leader in Texas, we will continue to grow our Partner population as well as technology presence to complement our store operations, enabling customers to choose how they shop, pay for and receive products.”

The London and Austin technology ecosystems have developed a strong relationship during the last decade.

And on Wednesday, Capital Factory, a technology accelerator in downtown Austin, officially announced it has joined forces with Plexal, an innovation center that sits within London’s Here East technology campus.

The deal came together following meetings last March at South by Southwest and in June during London Technology Week. As a result, Here East’s Chief Operating Officer Michael Magan, and Plexal’s Managing Director Andrew Roughan signed an agreement with Capital Factory’s Director of International Affairs Fred Schmidt.

In Austin,  Andy Jones, a London native who runs Marvelous Events in Austin and Schmidt will help U.K. and Texas companies seeking to do business with each other. Capital Factory members will have a hot desk at Here East and they will get to work out of there while overseas. And the same is true for members of Here East and Plexal when they come to Austin or Dallas. They get to work out of Capital Factory’s facilities in either city.

“We can help make this affordable,” Jones said, making it easier for companies to do business overseas. The two working together can help startups find inexpensive housing, find mentors and develop other relationships to expand into a new market, he said.

Schmidt has been courting the relationship with the U.K. since 2012 and a trade mission which led to a sister city relationship with the London Borough of Hackney where Here East is located.

Here East is a technology redevelopment project from the 2012 London Olympics. It has 1.2 million square feet of space in three buildings in East London. Today, it has more than 3,000 tech, creative, science and academic professionals with plans to grow to 5,000. Its tenants include the Plexal accelerator, BT Sports, Ford Motor Company, Loughborough University, City College London, and The Gantry creative studios.

Capital Factory and Here East will work together in programs in areas such as cybersecurity and defense, mobility, diversity and inclusion, education, health, and AR/VR, according to a news release.

Plexal and Capital Factory are also focused on corporate partners, Schmidt said. They can introduce tech startups to established companies for partnerships and customer relationships, he said.

Among the startups that could benefit from the relationship is Senseye, a four-year-old startup with 26 employees, that has customers in the United Kingdom. Senseye, which is part of the Capital Factory accelerator, works with Lloyds of London to evaluate employees for safety risks in the marine industry, said David Zakariaie, Senseye’s founder and CEO. Senseye has raised $4 million in seed stage capital to date and moved from Capital Factory to larger offices at Eighth and Congress.

About 75 percent of the accidents that happen in the marine industry have all been because of human error, Zakariaie said. Senseye’s high tech system scans a person’s iris to check if they are stressed, impaired by alcohol or drugs or fatigued. If they are, they get a red light that doesn’t allow them to work that day, Zakariaie.

“It’s essentially a platform to mitigate for the human element of the risk,” he said.

With the new agreement between Capital Factory and Plexal, Senseye has an office now in the Here East technology campus, Schmidt said. And that’s the focus of the relationship to make it easy for Austin companies to set up shop in the U.K. and enter the European market for U.K. companies to have a desk at Capital Factory and entry into the Austin, Dallas, Texas and U.S. market, he said.

Already, 80 U.K. companies have a presence in Austin and about 40 to 50 Austin-based companies have a presence in the U.K., said Haileigh Meyers, with the U.K. Department of International Trade. Meyers has an office at Capital Factory.

Working together makes sense, Schmidt said. Texas, overall, is the world’s 10^th largest Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, economy in the world and the U.K. is the 5^th largest economy. Combined, they represent the third largest global economy, he said.

The key for U.K. startups is having a point of contact in Austin, Dallas and Texas overall to start building relationships, Schmidt said.

“We try to make very qualified and useful introductions to people that hopefully will be lasting and result in success,” Schmidt said.

Collaboration between the two ecosystems make both economies stronger, said Maia Donohue with 3 Day Startup.

3 Day Startup, which is based at Capital Factory, has done more than 20 programs in the U.K. with Queen Mary University of London, University of Edinburgh, Donohue said. 3 Day Startup is holding its fifth annual Global Roundup Conference this week at Capital Factory and will be hosting several entrepreneurs from the U.K., Donohue said.

Developing long-term relationships is essential, he said.

There are subtle differences in doing business in each country that can make or break a deal, Donohue said.

3 Day Startup and Capital Factory also brought in student groups from Hackney Community College to solve problems for British Airways, RetailMeNot and Adobe Systems and present them onstage at Hackney House at South by Southwest, Schmidt said.

And Schmidt said no matter what happens with Brexit, which refers to the British Exit from the European Union, Capital Factory will continue to cultivate its relationship with the U.K. Capital Factory is also in active discussions with other countries within the European Union to set up a relationship similar to the one it has with Here East, Schmidt said.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s full speed ahead, business as usual,” Schmidt said.

By LAURA LOREK, Publisher of Silicon Hills News

In a historic office building close to Capital Factory in downtown Austin, Rocket Dollar is disrupting the way people invest retirement dollars.

The two-year-old startup allows people to use self-directed retirement accounts to make a wide variety of investments into real estate, startups, precious metals and more.

“Eighty million people have over $50,000 in a retirement account today,” said Henry Yoshida, Rocket Dollar’s Co-founder and CEO. That represents $10 trillion in just IRAs, he said. “Our goal is to let people take those accounts, the money inside of them, and keep the tax benefits and invest in things that are not stocks and bonds.”

And it’s working, Yoshida said. To date, Rocket Dollar has customers from all 50 states and $50 million in assets under management coming from Rocket Dollar accounts, he said

Rocket Dollar’s lead investor is Village Global, a San Francisco-based venture capital fund that invests in early-stage startup and is backed by Billionaires like LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Google’s Eric Schmidt and more.  Rocket Dollar has raised a seed round of $3.5 million. Other investors include Capital Factory and the Central Texas Angel Network.

Yoshida, a serial entrepreneur who previously co-founded Honest Dollar, which sold to Goldman Sachs, has been busy travelling coast to coast to raise awareness about Rocket Dollar’s offering to investors, and arranging for channel partnerships. Last month, he gave a tour of his offices to those attending the Digital Banking conference in Austin.  The Digital Banking conference attracts more than 1,700 senior level executives from financial institutions and FinTech providers worldwide.

In addition to founding Honest Dollar, Yoshida is an angel investor with the Central Texas Angel Network. He is also a mentor at Capital Factory and Techstars. And he’s a Certified Financial Planner and former Merrill Lynch Vice President.

“My background in Austin is I set up a lot of these 401ks here, I set up several hundred over the last 15 years on the company side,” he said. “And then I helped the individuals leaving those companies find places to establish IRAs.”

Today, Rocket Dollar only works with individuals, he said.

This type of investing has been allowed since 1978, Yoshida said. Rocket Dollar didn’t invent it, he said. But it’s largely been out of reach for most people, he said. Rocket Dollar makes it accessible and easy for the masses, he said.

“I represent a digital platform to let people achieve 21^st century diversification and do something other than the set it and forget it: 60 percent stock and 40 percent bond portfolio,” Yoshida said.

Set it and forgot it is a slogan for a slow-roasted rotisserie chicken and not for the retirement industry, Yoshida said. He wrote a popular blog post about why that is not the way to manage a retirement account today.

At the Digital Banking conference, Yoshida presented a case study with its partner bank, Solar National Bank of Denver, Colorado. Its assets are held at that bank, which has a national charter. It also works with IRAR Trust, IRA Resources Inc. of La Jolla, California.

When Rocket Dollar’s assets under management hit $100 million, the startup plans to open a second office in Denver, Yoshida said. Right now, Rocket Dollar has 13 employees and a slate of interns, Yoshida said. It occupies 1,500 square feet at 221 E 9^th Street.

Rocket Dollar accounts allow people to unlock their retirement dollars and invest in their communities and in startups, Yoshida said. The government prohibits people from using retirement dollars to invest in startups that they or their immediate family members control but allows them to invest in startups run by friends and more distant family members.

 “You can’t invest in your company, but you can use Rocket Dollar as a way to raise money from individuals who want to take a small portion of their investment accounts and invest in a brewery or some other business,” Yoshida said. “It represents a good diversification. It might be something they have a personal attachment to it.”

It allows someone to purchase an apartment complex or invest in a partnership that own multiple properties to provide affordable housing in a community, Yoshida said.

Rocket Dollar makes money by charging a one-time $360 account setup fee and then $15 per month for account administration and compliance. It does not charge a fee for assets under management or add-on fees for new investments, according to the company.

“I make revenue from customers by giving them the ability to make their investment choices instead of making my revenue off of their investment, which is what the existing financial services industry does” Yoshida said.

Whether someone has $10,000 or $200,000 in a Rocket Dollar account, they pay the same fee, he said.

Leo Ramirez Jr., founder of Encast, opened a Rocket Dollar account to diversify his investment.

“I’m an entrepreneur and I also mentor some entrepreneurs,” he said. “I sit on two startup boards. I saw that this could be a way for me to potentially invest in their companies.”

“I think they have an amazing idea,” Ramirez said. “If I didn’t like them as much as I do, I wouldn’t keep sending friends and families to invest with them. They are changing the landscape for people looking to invest their retirement funds in diverse ways.”

Hypergiant Industries has big goals like creating smart cities, flying cars, and finding a cure for cancer, Bill Nye, one of the world’s most famous mechanical engineers, known as The Science Guy., says in a video created for Hypergiant.

“We’re not aiming for utopia, but simply a better universe,” Nye says in the video.

“This is not too distant world to which we are travelling and all of humanity will arrive and Hypergiant will be the ones to take you there today,” Nye says. “Because Hypergiant is not waiting for tomorrow to get you to tomorrow.”

And Nye is onboard with Hypergiant for the ride. The startup, which launched in February of 2018, announced this week it has added Nye to its executive advisory board among other distinguished individuals.

Hypergiant, with 175 employees in Austin, Dallas, Houston and Seattle, bills itself as “the AI Industrial complex for leading global enterprises and governments.” The company’s space division, Hypergiant Galactic Systems, focuses on AI-driven software and hardware for the space industry.

Earlier this month, Hypergiant Industries announced it had secured funding from Sumitomo Corporate of Americas and Perot Jain, Additional investors include Align Capital, Tom Meredith, former CFO of Dell, and Austin Mayor Steve Adler. The company has not disclosed how much funding it has raised to date.

Hypergiant also reported it is on pace to be one of the fastest technology companies to reach $100 million in revenue.

“Hypergiant has an ambitious mission – to address some big problems using artificial intelligence systems. I’m looking forward to working with Hypergiant to develop artificially intelligent systems in two areas I care about a great deal – climate change and space exploration. We need to think big, and I’m very optimistic about what AI can do to make the world quite a bit better,”  Bill Nye, CEO of Planetary Society, engineer, science advocate, and Hypergiant Executive Advisory Board member.

A Better World

Bill Nye, CEO of the Planetary Society, talks about building a better world and tomorrowing today with Hypergiant.

Hypergiant’s board is “the next critical step in the growth of the rapidly scaling company.” Its new advisory board members have experience in astronautics, climate change, artificial intelligence, ethics in AI, and aerospace.

“We know it’s critical to have the leading thinkers of our time join with us as we continue this amazing journey. This board is a collection of people who are changing the way we think about various enterprise sectors but also the planet, technology, space and what’s best for the entire human race,” Ben Lamm, CEO and co-founder of Hypergiant, said in a news release.

Other new board members include General Lance Lord, USAF (retired), Sangeeta Mudnal, senior director for FATE (Fairness, Accountability, Transparency and Ethics), John McKinley, entrepreneur and business executive who has held CTO positions at News Corp., GE Capital and AOL, Andrew Essex, advertising business executive who served as CEO of Tribeca Enterprises, Nova Spivach, a successful venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur, Lisa Harris, founder of Align Capital, Andrew Allen, a three-time space flight veteran and former Space Shuttle Commander, and CEO of Aerodyne Industries, Lloyd Walker, president of Precurve, James D. Royston, President and CEO of L2 Aerospace, Tom Meredith, senior partner in Brightstar Capital Partners, Andy Hickl, an innovator in artificial intelligence, big data analytics and natural language processing.

Remedy, a healthcare service provider, announced Wednesday that it has raised $10 million.

The Austin-based company plans to use the funding to expand its technology platform and to recruit new employees.

Remedy is focused on simplifying access to urgent and primary care. It has created a proprietary technology-enabled telemedicine portal, which it combines with house call doctor visits and walk-in clinics.

Austin-based Santé Ventures led the round along with Dr. Joe Cunningham, a nationally recognized expert in healthcare delivery systems and Doug French, a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives who has published and spoken extensively on healthcare collaboration and reform. They are both Managing Directors at Santé Ventures and will join Remedy’s Board.

“We instantly connected with Santé’s values,” Dr. Jeremy Gabrysch, Founder and CEO at Remedy, said in a news release. “The relationships and expertise Santé brings as physicians, former chief executives of large healthcare systems and early and steadfast investors in companies that are revolutionizing healthcare is invaluable. More than anything, we share a passion for better quality and access for patients.”

Remedy’s platform helps people find alternatives to visiting the emergency room. The company cited a study from Truven research, that shows as many as 71 percent of emergency department patients are seen for conditions that could be handled at non-emergency facilities.

Remedy’s platform has expanded to include 24/7 access to nurse triage, lab test visits and statewide telemedicine.

“After reviewing numerous telemedicine companies in recent years, we feel confident Remedy can scale beyond traditional primary care delivery and is well-positioned to dramatically lower costs and improve outcomes for high-cost procedures and chronic disease management,” said Cunningham. “The market potential for coordinated care delivery and chronic disease management from a telemedicine platform is the next evolution of this technology.”

Austin-based PHLUR, a fragrance company, announced Tuesday that it has received $7 million in funding.

In addition, PFLUR acquired Austin-based Texas Beauty Labs, a clean beauty products maker, founded in 2008. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed. As part of the transaction, Texas Beauty Labs has formally changed its name to The Goodkind Co.

Symrise Inc. led the round with participation from existing investor Next Coast Ventures, and new investor Belcorp, the second largest beauty company in South America.

“We created a line of thoughtfully crafted fragrances with full ingredient transparency because we felt it was the right thing to do. Now clean beauty has become a movement, with more and more people correctly holding brands accountable to create safer and more sustainable products and be fully transparent in their product decisions,” Eric Korman, co-founder & CEO of PHLUR, said in a news release.

 PHLUR and The Goodkind Co first partnered last year on the development of body care for PHLUR, and subsequently jointly launched Explore Naturals, an all-natural, high-performance line of deodorants,

“With the launch of Explore Naturals, it was clear that we had created a special partnership. We launched the brand on Amazon in under three months, and then in the next three months we achieved annualized revenue of over $1M,” Mary Berry, the CEO of The Goodkind Co, said in a news release. “This is an early example of what we will be able to achieve together for our direct benefit, and equally as important for our clients.”

Founded in 2015, PHLUR Inc. is a certified B Corp that provides complete transparency into its ingredients and processes, using an intentional balance of materials derived from botany and from the lab. PHLUR offers customers fine fragrances, body care, candles, and recently launched a line of natural deodorants under the brand Explore Naturals.

“We were one of the first investors in Phlur and while the notion of selling fragrance online was pretty radical at first, we knew Eric and his team’s ability to create a completely immersive, digital experience for customers would make them a D2C brand to be reckoned with,” Thomas Ball, co-founder and managing director of Next Coast Ventures, said in a news release. “Phlur’s acquisition of Texas Beauty Labs is a seamless extension of their mission to provide sustainable, clean beauty products to customers and we’re excited to be ongoing supporters of this exciting new phase of growth.”

H-E-B opened its Eastside Tech Hub in Austin on Monday.

The 81,000 square foot office serves as the new headquarters for Favor, the Austin-based on-demand delivery service H-E-B bought last year. It also houses H-E-B Digital Partners, which complements H-E-B’s existing digital team at its San Antonio-based headquarters.

“Having a shared space like this is crucial to both H-E-B Digital and Favor’s rapid growth,” Jag Bath, H-E-B chief digital officer and Favor CEO, said in a news release. “The Eastside Tech Hub enables us to have a strong tech presence in both Austin and San Antonio, while fostering a better connection between our teams across the two cities.”

H-E-B worked with IA Interior Architects to design the new office, which formerly served as a warehouse. The two-story building features an open layout with no offices, but more than 50 meeting rooms, telephone booths and a library.

H-E-B is also going to run a shuttle bus with Wi-Fi between its San Antonio headquarters and the Eastside Tech Hub throughout the week.

Additionally, the modern office boasts a coffee bar featuring local roasteries, a lounge area, a large events space and a wellness center featuring a rock-climbing wall, curated fitness classes, bike parking and showers.

The office is located at 2416 East Sixth Street near several restaurants, coffee shops, breweries and the 7th Street H-E-B store.

The office features brick and tile sourced by D’Hanis Brick in San Antonio, handmade furniture from Marfa and plants native to the Lone Star State. The space also showcases the work of several Texas-based makers and artists, including portraits and murals by Will Bryant, multimedia art by R.F. Alvarez and installations by Cody Barber.

To commemorate the opening of the Eastside Tech Hub, H-E-B and Favor will make $100,000 in charitable gifts to support hundreds of students in Austin and San Antonio via STEMbased summer camps and programs, such as Code2College in Central Texas, the Austin Prefreshman Engineering Program at Huston-Tillotson University, Video Game Camp at Austin Community College and Youth Code Jam in San Antonio and Austin.

Eastside Tech Hub: H-E-B Digital Austin Office & Favor HQ

Take a look inside the newest office for our Austin-based Digital Partners and the new headquarters of Favor, the Eastside Tech Hub.

The Eastside Tech Hub will initially house hundreds of Favor team members and H-E-B Digital Partners, with room to grow. H-E-B Digital, in Austin and San Antonio, and Favor are both actively hiring across all areas of expertise, including product management, product design and software engineering.

Austin-based Moolah U, which runs camps to teach students financial responsibility, chose to participate in the MassChallenge Texas accelerator to gain access to mentors and investors to scale its business.

“We’ve been running these programs for 15 years and we’ve found that the best way to teach kids is through real experience,” said Ben Aubin, Moolah’s 16-year-old developer. “We’ve supported 4,000 families and we want to bring that to 4 million more and the way to do that is through building an app.”

Aubin is creating the app, targeted at children, ages 7 to 17. He’s previously developed a homework app and an app for driver’s education. The Moolah U app ties in with a debit card which integrates with financial tools and education information and allows kids to make smart choices with their money with parental supervision.

It’s all about building budgeting systems and solid financial habits from a young age, said Gayle Reaume, founder of Moolah U. The app is under development and should be live by the end of the program, she said.

Moolah U is one of 74 startups selected to participate in MassChallenge Texas’s latest Austin cohort, which kicked off this month. MassChallenge Texas held its Austin 2019 Startup Showcase last Thursday at Native Hostel.

At the event, the startups, including 22 from the Austin area, pitched their ventures in a private event for mentors and other invited supporters. Afterwards, they set up shop at tables in a demo area to provide the public with information about their companies.

While Moolah U is developing a fintech app for kids, another fintech startup, Guide Change is an application to help older adults and their family members communicate better about finances.  Leah Cohen co-founded Guide Change with Michael Curran. The app is designed for seniors to help monitor their finances and avoid fraud and unnecessary fees. It also allows them to budget for housing and healthcare and find ways to save money. Cohen, a geriatric care provider, previously participated in the Tarmac Texas accelerator at Galvanize. The app is in beta testing right now, she said.

“We’re really lucky to have made it into this program,” Cohen said.

MassChallenge Texas will help Guide Change take its app to a wider audience and will help with marketing and sales and all other aspects of scaling the business, she said.

All the startups participating in the MassChallenge Texas program compete for $500,000 in equity-free prize money at the end of the 16-week accelerator.

Austin-based Emergent Tree Education, founded in 2009 by former educators Stacy Morgan and Mae Coffman, want to reach a wider market with their business through the MassChallenge Texas accelerator. They provide training, coaching and software in the area of behavior to more than 400 school districts and campuses across the state of Texas, Coffman said. It’s developing an online software as a service platform that will allow Emergent Tree Education to reach more teachers across the nation, she said. They joined the accelerator for mentorship and to put best practices in place to market and scale their business, Coffman said.

“We’re hoping MassChallenge can help us develop our business so we can be the most effective in helping teachers,” Coffman said.

The startups participating in the MassChallenge Texas accelerator come from a wide range of industries including energy and clean tech, high-tech, social impact, general and retail and healthcare and life sciences.

One of the consumer products companies participating is Snack Jack, a plant-based jerky made from Jackfruit, founded by Diana Dussan and her brother, Julian Dussan.  Diana came up with the idea for the product in 2016 and bought a used dehydrator to create samples. It was a hit with the friends and family she test marketed it with initially. Throughout the last three years, she has perfected the recipe. And when she became pregnant, she reconfigured the recipe so it would be free of soy, gluten, added sugars and other allergens.

Snack Jack has gotten rave reviews from foodies, Diana said. It has been called one of the most “buzz worthy foods for 2019” by Food Network Magazine and “Jerky of the Future,” by the Austin Chronicle. That word of mouth buzz has helped to fuel sales, Diana said. They are selling the product in eight states through select retailers and at farmer’s markets with plans to expand further nationally, she said. They are available in Whole Foods locally, she said. They are participating in MassChallenge Texas to work with mentors and to meet partners and work on distribution channels, Diana said. And they’ve got a lot more products in the pipeline, said Julian Dussan.

Allen Thornton, founder of Grant Source, based in Houston, is participating in MassChallenge Texas and plans to become the next big tech unicorn to come from Texas.

Grant Source helps non-profit organizations and for-profit businesses find funding through grants. So far, it has helped customers receive $4.8 million in funding since it launched its app in 2018.  Grant Source is participating in the MassChallenge Texas accelerator to get strategic partners, mentors and to win the big cash prize.

“We play to win,” Thornton said. “By winning this competition, it’s an equity accelerator…We are the next billion-dollar Unicorn….We are disrupting a $40 billion industry.”

Another Houston-based startup, GotSpot, founded by Reda Hicks, is participating in the MassChallenge Texas accelerator. GotSpot is like an Airbnb rental space for businesses. It helps them find short term commercial space for events, company meetings, art projects, culinary projects, fitness training and more.

Hicks commutes to Austin to participate in the program to get the most out of the office space provided by WeWork Barton Springs, to network with mentors and other startups and to participate in all the specialized programming.

“I have been really blown away by the program so far,” Hicks said. “It’s kind of like drinking from a fire hydrant because there is so much content.”

By LAURA LOREK, publisher of Silicon Hills News

To see the impact of 5G communications, look no further than the new 5G Innovation Zone which officially opened at Samsung’s Austin campus Friday.

The Innovation Zone showcases different applications of 5G technology including health and environmental sensors, automated material handling, industrial Internet of Things, robotics, and mixed reality for training.

The Innovation Zone is designed to leverage a combination of multiple connectivity technologies, including 5G, LTE, and Wi-Fi, according to AT&T.

“I just love being in this space,” said Austin Mayor Steve Adler. “You walk into this space and you feel exciting things are happening and you know that they are.”

Austin is on the leading edge of driving new technologies and it owes that to companies like Samsung and AT&T who are such a big part of who we are, Mayor Adler said. It’s really exciting to know Austin plays a vital part in the 5G movement, which is the direction of the future, he said.

The 5G technology allows us to have cities that are smarter, Mayor Adler said. “And it allows us to accumulate and use data in ways that we have never done before.” That data will help identify trends and opportunities, he said.

“The fact that so much of that is happening in Austin, Texas feels appropriate and it’s just the right thing to do,” Mayor Adler said. “This is Austin, Texas, we are innovative and entrepreneurial and on the cutting edge.”

Gil Heyun Choi, president of Samsung Austin Semiconductor, welcomed the group of community and city leaders, Samsung and AT&T employees, media and other dignitaries to the ribbon-cutting event. Samsung, which set up shop in Austin in 1996, has nearly 3,000 employees at the site, which manufactures computer chips for phones and other communication devices. The Austin plant is the only one Samsung, based in Seoul, South Korea, operates outside of Korea.

To understand the impact of the current technology, it’s important to look at the past, said Mo Katibeh, chief marketing officer, AT&T Business.

The first power plant providing electricity in America was turned on Sept. 4, 1884, on Pearl Street in Manhattan, New York, Katibeh said. From that auspicious beginning, the electrical revolution was born. It transformed every single industry and led to new ways of thinking about healthcare and manufacturing, he said. 5G is the same kind of transformative technology, Katibeh said.

5G technology brings unparallel speeds about 100 times faster than the average LTE connection, Katibeh said. It also allows for the processing of information as quickly as the human brain, he said.

“That means we can now create experiences that mirror the reality that we all perceive,” Katibeh said.

And 5G allows people to connect millions of devices, he said.

Soon, all companies will be 5G enabled, said Alok Shah, Vice President, Samsung Networks Strategy at Samsung Electronics America. This combination of very high speeds and instant communications will transform the way companies get business done, he said.

“We are here to open the Innovation Zone, another way to think of it is it is really a window into the industry transformation that we know is coming,” Shah said.

This facility is home to the world’s most advanced fabrication facility, known as a fab, said Jon Taylor, Vice President, Austin Semiconductor. It’s been in operation for more than 23 years, and has continually expanded into new areas, he said.

“Today marks the beginning of a new way of thinking about the future of manufacturing,” Taylor said.

5G is not available to most consumers today but is expected to be widely available in a number of cities by the end of the year as it is deployed throughout the country, said John M. Godfrey, senior vice president of public policy for Samsung Electronics America.

5G, the fifth-generation cellular technology, has been deployed in parts of Austin, and is available around the University of Texas at Austin campus, said Katibeh with AT&T. It also rolled out in parts of San Antonio late last year.

In Austin, the City has been slow to approve the small cell permits needed to create the network across the city. The small cells that transmit the 5G signals are about as big as a backpack and attach to existing poles and infrastructure.

“Unfortunately, Austin is still much further behind in the small cell permitting process when compared to other major urban areas,” Tracy King, vice president of public affairs for AT&T Texas, said in a written statement. “We look forward to working with them to ensure the process is as efficient as possible.”

AT&T and Samsung partnered on the new 5G Innovation Zone last September and since then they’ve been working together to build out the use cases and construct the facility, said Shah, Vice President, Samsung Networks Strategy at Samsung Electronics America.

All these test cases are possibilities of things we could deploy, Taylor said. There are other things that will be under consideration as the technology is deployed, he said.

5G technology combined with Augmented Reality will create an entirely new way of thinking about work, said Katibeh with AT&T. It could create a marketplace of skills and retirees could consult for companies via mobile video communications without ever leaving their home, he said. It’s part of the evolving nature of work as new technologies are introduced, they change the way we do things, he said.

Samsung creates the chips that power smartphones and tablets that run on the 5G network and it also makes infrastructure equipment like antennas that transmit the 5G network throughout communities. Samsung conducted tours of its fabrication facility following the ribbon cutting on the Innovation Zone.

“We are really excited about this opening, this is just the first step in our journey,” said Shah, Vice President, Samsung Networks Strategy at Samsung Electronics America. “5G is going to transform businesses, all kinds of businesses, and certainly manufacturing.”

Samsung’s fabrication plant is one of the largest in the world. Its plant includes 350,000 square feet of Class 100 cleanroom space. From the catwalk, a glass window provides a glimpse inside the massive clean room where the automated material handling system delivers 4.2 million wafers daily, the equivalent of delivering 3.2 million pizzas every day.

When Samsung opened its plant in 1996, humans did 100 percent of the work. Today, 98 percent is automated and handled by robots and Samsung is working to automate the last two percent through new technology like 5G. The plant currently runs on Wi-Fi. A handful of Samsung employees, dressed in white head to toe bunny suits with breathing apparatuses, oversee all the plant’s activity from computer terminals on the plant floor. They act as air traffic controllers making sure the robots perform their jobs accurately and on time. Every few seconds, something is getting picked up and dropped off. Chips spend 60 days in the factory. 5G technology will make the manufacturing process even more efficient and faster, according to Samsung.

WATCH | AT&T and Samsung Explore 5G Possibilities in Manufacturing

AT&T and Samsung are bringing 5G to the manufacturing industry – showcasing their recent innovations and potential use cases at the 5G Innovation Zone at Samsung Austin Semiconductor. SUBSCRIBE http://youtube.com/att About AT&T: A view into how our employees and customers connect with their favorite people, products, services and entertainment.

Two Austin companies focused on data have joined forces.

data.world announced this week it has acquired Capsenta, founded at the University of Texas at Austin in 2015.

Capsenta created patented data translation and integration software allowing its customers to combine and analyze relational databases faster and more efficiently.

Data.world, which launched in July of 2016, has raised $44.7 million to date to build its online data platform. Capsenta is the company’s first acquisition. The purchase price was not disclosed. Capsenta had previously raised $750,000 in seed stage funding, according to this 2015 Silicon Hills News profile on the startup.

 “Enterprise data management and analysis is operating across two different paradigms—cloud and on-premises—and for Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies, it’s going to be a hybrid world for a long time,” Brett Hurt, co-founder and CEO of data.world, said in a news release. “So I’m very excited about this acquisition because it brings to data.world capabilities that are critical to our enterprise customers, and helps us connect these two worlds together in ways that deliver the benefits of cloud migration while leveraging the value of existing infrastructure investments and on-prem data.”

Following the merger, Capsenta Co-founder and Senior Vice President of Technical Sales and Research Juan Sequeda, PhD will join data.world as Principal Scientist. CEO Wayne Heideman will stay on to manage Capsenta products internally and will serve as data.world’s General Manager of Capsenta. Co-founder Prof. Daniel Miranker, PhD, will advise data.world while continuing his research and teaching career of over 30 years at UT-Austin.

Capsenta brings to data.world its data integration software Ultrawrap™ and its real-time, collaborative, knowledge graph schema modeling tool Gra.fo. In addition, Capsenta’s three issued patents brings the data.world issued patent portfolio to a total of ten with several additional patent applications in process.

“Our research started over a decade ago by asking a basic question—what does it mean to combine relational database and semantic web technology? The outcome was a series of theoretical and systems results which were productized in Capsenta. The solutions we ultimately arrived at, combined with our compliance experience with highly-regulated clients, is a really nice match for data.world and Capsenta customers,” Sequeda said in a news release. “We’re all excited to bring our technology to a whole new audience with a company that’s so dedicated to building truly data-driven cultures.”

“This is a huge win for Austin and for the University of Texas,” Joshua Baer, founder of Capital Factory, said in a news release. “This is a homegrown success story that touches every part of the Austin startup ecosystem. Juan Sequeda has been a startup community leader for the past decade and his Semantic Web meetup was one of the first to meet regularly at Capital Factory. I’m proud to have been an investor in data.world since day one.”

“The University of Texas at Austin has its fingerprints all over the acquisition of Capsenta by data.world,” UT Professor of Innovation Bob Metcalfe said in a news release. “Several years ago Computer Science Professor Daniel Miranker started talking about exciting work with his graduate student Juan Sequeda. They were bringing stores of existing on-premises data, much of it relational, onto the Web by wrapping it in Tim Berners-Lee’s Semantic Web and wanted to commercialize it. So UT-Austin released that intellectual property to them and they went on to form Capsenta with it. With data.world building knowledge graphs for their customers in the cloud and Capsenta making on-premises customer data available via the Semantic Web, they have a perfect match.”

“As an investor in both companies, we are delighted to see the technology platform developed by Capsenta help achieve data.world’s mission to create the most meaningful, collaborative, and abundant data resource in the world,” Venu Shamapant, Founding Partner at LiveOak Venture Partners said in a news release..