Introduction

Houston’s technology sector splits into three lanes, and knowing which lane a company operates in tells you most of what you need to know about it. Enterprise software firms built around the energy industry, pricing platforms, IT automation, finance tools, form the deepest bench. Aerospace and space technology companies cluster around NASA’s Johnson Space Center, a legacy that runs six decades deep. And a smaller group of venture-backed startups is building things like private space stations and logistics platforms that have nothing to do with oil and gas at all. This list covers all three lanes, plus the global companies that picked Houston as a regional hub.

Every company below has a verified, currently active presence in Houston, TX as of 2026, not just a mention on someone else’s list. A few names that showed up on earlier versions of lists like this one don’t appear here anymore, because they’ve been acquired, folded into a parent company, or renamed since anyone last checked.

How We Selected These Companies

Every company on this list passes three checks. First, a verified, currently active Houston headquarters or a real, staffed local office, not just a mailing address. Second, independent current operation: a company fully absorbed into another brand with no distinct Houston identity doesn’t qualify, which is why last year’s ATM operator isn’t on this list anymore. Third, a measurable footprint, meaning a specific employee count, revenue figure, funding round, or facility investment we could point to.

Companies are grouped loosely by their relationship to Houston, headquartered, regional hub, major office, or startup, rather than strictly ranked first to twentieth. Comparing a public company’s annual revenue to a startup’s last funding round isn’t a fair way to rank anything, so we didn’t try.

The table below is a quick-reference version: company, headquarters, founding year, and what each one focuses on, with the name linked straight to its site. The full write-up for each one follows after, with more on what it actually does and who runs it today.

Houston IT and Tech Companies at a Glance

1. Octal Digital

Founded: 2014   |   Headquarters: Houston, TX (Energy Corridor)   |   CEO: David Roberts

Octal Digital is a Houston-based software development company founded in June 2014 by Riz Mian, David Roberts, who still runs the company as CEO. The team works out of the Energy Corridor and builds mobile apps, web platforms, and custom software for clients across Katy, Sugar Land, and greater Houston. Recent projects have leaned more toward AI integration and cloud migration, as more Houston businesses move off legacy systems onto modern infrastructure.

Services:

• Mobile app development
• Web development
• Custom software development
• AI development and integration

Houston’s bench goes deeper than one company, though. A few of the biggest names in enterprise tech either started here or built a serious operating base in the city.

2. HPE

Founded: 2015 (spinoff)   |   Headquarters: Spring, TX   |   Revenue: $34.3 billion (fiscal 2025)

Hewlett Packard Enterprise split from the original Hewlett-Packard in 2015 and kept its headquarters in Spring, just northwest of downtown Houston. The company closed fiscal 2025 with $34.3 billion in revenue, up nearly 14% year over year, helped along by its acquisition of Juniper Networks. HPE’s GreenLake platform, which lets enterprise customers pay for cloud infrastructure the way they’d pay a utility bill, ended the year with close to 46,000 customers.

Services:

• Enterprise IT infrastructure and servers
• Hybrid cloud (GreenLake)
• AI and networking hardware
• Enterprise consulting and support

3. BMC Software

Founded: 1980   |   Headquarters: Houston, TX   |   Owner: KKR (since 2018)

BMC Software has been in Houston since 1980, when it started out writing mainframe software. KKR took the company private in 2018, and BMC has kept reshaping itself since: in 2025 it spun its Helix product line into a separate company, BMC Helix, and in June 2026 private equity firm Montagu agreed to acquire a majority stake in Helix in a carve-out deal, with KKR keeping BMC itself plus a minority stake in Helix. The core BMC business still does IT service management, workflow automation, and AIOps for large enterprise IT departments, mostly in energy, healthcare, and financial services.

4. Cognite

Founded: 2016   |   Headquarters: Oslo, Norway (Houston office)   |   Founder: John Markus Lervik

Cognite is a Norwegian industrial software company that opened a Houston office in 2019 specifically to work with oil and gas clients. Its main product, Cognite Data Fusion, pulls scattered industrial data into one place so engineers can build AI applications and digital twins on top of it instead of starting from scratch. The company added a new U.S. hub in Arizona in late 2025, but the Houston office is still active and still focused on energy customers.

5. Microsoft

Founded: 1975   |   Headquarters: Redmond, WA (Houston office)   |   Revenue: $281.7 billion (fiscal 2025, company-wide)

Microsoft isn’t a Houston company, but it runs a local office and counts a long list of the city’s energy, healthcare, and finance companies as Azure customers. Its cloud and AI tools sit underneath several other entries on this list, including Cognite’s data platform and KBR’s modernization work. Microsoft closed its 2025 fiscal year with $281.7 billion in company-wide revenue, up almost 15% from the year before, with Azure alone crossing $75 billion.

Three of the next five companies changed hands or restructured in the past year alone. That kind of turnover is normal right now in Houston’s homegrown enterprise software scene.

6. PROS (now PROS Travel)

Founded: 1985   |   Headquarters: Houston, TX   |   Status: Acquired by Thoma Bravo, December 2025

PROS started in Houston in 1985 building pricing software and spent decades as a public company on the New York Stock Exchange before Thoma Bravo bought it in an all-cash deal that closed in December 2025. The acquisition split PROS in two: its travel pricing business now operates as PROS Travel out of Houston under CEO Sunil John, while its B2B pricing business is being folded into Conga, another Thoma Bravo portfolio company. The Houston office remains active under the PROS Travel name.

7. Onit

Founded: 2010   |   Headquarters: Houston, TX   |   Founder and CEO: Eric Elfman

Onit is a Houston legal technology company founded in 2010 by Eric Elfman, who still runs it as CEO. The company builds workflow software for corporate legal departments, covering contract management, matter tracking, and vendor spend, and it has kept growing through acquisitions, including AI legal startup McCarthyFinch and, more recently, Synaptec and LawBase in late 2025. Onit remains privately held and headquartered in Houston.

8. The Aerospace Corporation

Founded: 1960   |   Headquarters: Chantilly, VA   |   Houston office: Established 1974, near Johnson Space Center

The Aerospace Corporation is a nonprofit research center that supports U.S. space and national security programs. It moved its corporate headquarters from El Segundo, California to Chantilly, Virginia in March 2024 to sit closer to the Pentagon and Space Force, but its Houston office has anchored part of the city’s space-tech identity since 1974, working on technology evaluation and mission integration support for NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Aerospace still runs as a federally funded research and development center rather than a commercial vendor.

9. KBR

Founded: 1998   |   Headquarters: Houston, TX   |   Revenue: ~$7.7 billion (fiscal 2025)   |   CEO: Stuart Bradie

KBR grew out of Halliburton’s engineering and construction operations and has been headquartered in Houston since 1998. The company reported roughly $7.7 billion in revenue for fiscal 2025, with growth driven by defense and intelligence contracts and continued LNG project work along the Gulf Coast. KBR does mission-critical support work for NASA and several other federal agencies, alongside its energy transition and engineering business.

Services:

• Engineering and construction
• Defense and aerospace systems
• Energy transition solutions
• Digital modernization and cyber defense

Also Read: Top 20 Best Tech Companies in Dallas

The next stretch of this list runs through Houston’s industrial backbone: gas suppliers, process software, and the engineering firms keeping the city’s refineries and chemical plants on modern systems instead of decades-old ones.

10. Air Liquide

Founded: 1902   |   Global HQ: Paris, France   |   Houston: Air Liquide USA corporate HQ, Katy Freeway

Air Liquide’s global headquarters sits in Paris, but the company’s US operations are corporately headquartered in Houston, where Air Liquide USA runs its Large Industries, Electronics, and Hydrogen Energy businesses nationwide. It supplies the ultra-high purity gases used in chip fabrication and works on carbon capture and hydrogen projects tied to the energy transition, including systems that support healthcare app development work for medical gas clients. The company has operated in some form since 1902 and now runs connected, cloud-based monitoring across its Houston-area plants.

11. AspenTech (an Emerson business unit)

Founded: 1981   |   Headquarters: Bedford, MA   |   Status: Wholly owned subsidiary of Emerson since March 2025

AspenTech built its name writing process optimization software for the energy and chemicals industries, spun out of MIT research in 1981. Emerson bought a majority stake in 2022 and completed a full buyout in March 2025, so AspenTech now operates as an Emerson business unit rather than an independent public company. Its software is still widely used across Houston’s refining and petrochemical plants for process simulation and asset optimization.

Services:

• Asset performance management
• Process simulation and optimization
• Supply chain management
• AI for industrial operations

Not every company here runs at AspenTech’s scale. Houston also has a layer of mid-size IT and consulting firms that keep other companies’ systems patched, migrated, and running, work that rarely makes headlines but has to happen anyway.

12. Cambay Consulting

Founded: 2012   |   Headquarters: Katy, TX (Houston metro)

Cambay Consulting is a Katy-based technology and staffing company founded in 2012, offering IT staffing alongside cloud migration and Microsoft solutions work. It holds Microsoft Gold Partner status and serves healthcare, finance, and energy clients across the Houston area, focused mainly on Azure cloud services and application modernization for mid-size companies moving off older systems.

13. DataVox

Founded: 1990   |   Headquarters: Houston, TX

DataVox has been a Houston fixture since 1990, when it started as a telecommunications provider before expanding into IT infrastructure and cybersecurity. The company has picked up local recognition over the years, including the Houston Better Business Bureau’s Pinnacle Award, and now runs managed IT and security services alongside its original audiovisual and networking business.

14. DraftKings

Founded: 2012   |   Headquarters: Boston, MA (Houston office)

DraftKings runs a Houston office as part of its national sports betting and gaming operation, even though the company is headquartered in Boston. Its mobile betting and fantasy sports apps handle heavy transaction volume in Texas ahead of any statewide legalization, and the underlying platform relies on AI-driven odds-setting and fraud detection across every state where it operates.

15. Enverus

Founded: 1999 (as Drillinginfo)   |   Headquarters: Austin, TX   |   Houston: New office build-out at CityCentre, opening 2026

Enverus is headquartered in Austin, not Houston, but it’s actively growing its Houston footprint, with an 8,500-square-foot office build-out underway at CityCentre and a move-in planned for later in 2026. It started in 1999 as Drillinginfo and rebranded to Enverus in 2019 after merging with 1Derrick, and it now builds data and analytics tools for oil, gas, and renewable energy clients, running its platform on AI models trained specifically on energy market and production data.

Also Read: Top Tech Companies in Los Angeles

The next few entries cover construction software, fintech, and robotics, the quieter side of Houston’s tech economy that doesn’t get the headlines energy and aerospace do.

16. HCSS

Founded: 1986   |   Headquarters: Sugar Land, TX

HCSS has been based in Sugar Land, just southwest of Houston, since 1986, building software for the heavy construction industry. What started as estimating software has grown into a full platform covering fleet management, safety tracking, and job costing, used by contractors managing everything from highway projects to pipeline work across Texas.

17. HighRadius

Founded: 2006   |   Headquarters: Houston, TX   |   Founder: Sashi Narahari

HighRadius is a Houston-founded fintech company built by Sashi Narahari in 2006, now running what it calls an autonomous finance platform for large enterprises. The software automates order-to-cash and treasury processes using AI, aiming to shrink how long it takes companies to collect on invoices. HighRadius has raised significant venture funding over the years and remains privately held.

Services:

• Order-to-cash automation
• Treasury and cash management
• Accounts receivable solutions
• AI-based finance analytics

18. Oceaneering

Founded: 1964   |   Headquarters: Houston, TX

Oceaneering has operated out of Houston since 1964, originally as a diving and underwater services company for the offshore energy industry. It now builds subsea robotics, remotely operated vehicles, and automation systems, and has expanded into aerospace and defense work alongside its original offshore business, increasingly relying on cloud-connected monitoring to track equipment across job sites worldwide.

19. Alert Logic

Founded: 2002   |   Headquarters: Houston, TX   |   Owner: Fortra

Alert Logic built one of the earlier cloud-focused managed detection and response businesses, and it’s still headquartered in Houston today even after Fortra, formerly HelpSystems, acquired the company in 2022. In January 2026, Fortra agreed to sell Alert Logic’s managed services business, covering MDR, extended detection and response, and web application firewall management, to LevelBlue. That deal folds Alert Logic’s customer base into a larger managed security platform, but the Houston office and the Alert Logic brand continue to operate as of this writing.

The last name on this list doesn’t fit anywhere else on it. Axiom Space is the clearest sign that Houston’s tech identity now reaches past energy and into commercial space.

20. Axiom Space

Founded: 2016   |   Headquarters: Houston, TX (Houston Spaceport)   |   Founders: Michael Suffredini and Kam Ghaffarian

Axiom Space is building the first commercial space station, and it’s doing that work from a campus at the Houston Spaceport in Ellington Field. The company formally redomiciled its legal headquarters to Texas in June 2026, aligning its legal home with operations that were already based in Houston. Since 2022, Axiom has flown four private astronaut missions to the International Space Station, and it expects to launch the first module of Axiom Station in 2027.

Services:

• Commercial space station development
• Private astronaut mission management
• Space infrastructure engineering
• Astronaut training and mission control

What This List Says About Houston’s Tech Sector Right Now

Line up all 20 companies and a few patterns show up. Houston’s tech economy still leans heavily on energy, but not the way it did a decade ago. The companies serving oil and gas today are mostly selling software, AI platforms, and cloud infrastructure, not just equipment and field services. And Axiom Space, the newest name here, doesn’t touch energy at all. It picked Houston because Johnson Space Center and the Houston Spaceport gave it a real reason to, the same logic HPE followed when it chose the region for its global headquarters.

A handful of companies on this list also changed hands or changed structure just in the past year: PROS split apart under new ownership, AspenTech folded fully into Emerson, BMC spun off Helix into a deal with Montagu, and Alert Logic’s managed services business is being absorbed into LevelBlue even though the Houston office keeps operating under its own name for now. Cardtronics is the one name from past versions of this list that didn’t make the cut, since it hasn’t operated as an independent Houston brand since NCR acquired it in 2021. That churn is normal for a market this size, and it’s part of why a list like this needs an actual refresh instead of a yearly date-swap on the title.

If you’re comparing IT companies in Houston for your own project, the range here is worth paying attention to. A century-old engineering firm and a five-year-old cybersecurity startup solve very different problems, and the right fit depends on what you’re actually building. Octal Digital works out of the Energy Corridor on mobile apps and web platforms for companies across Houston, Katy, and Sugar Land. If you want to talk through a project, get in touch and we’ll walk you through what it would take.