AI consulting and development · Houston, TX
AI consulting and development for Houston companies
Your AI pilot gives answers nobody on the plant floor or the ward will act on, because it can't show the sensor reading or record behind them. Our senior engineers take it to production with retrieval that cites sources at volume, agents that stop for a person where it matters, and evals that score every change. Energy and the Texas Medical Center are Houston's biggest cases, and a port operator or builder needs the same.
Founded
2017, and still independent
Bench
115+ engineers, 80 Databricks-certified
Experience
Fifteen years average, per engineer
Serving
Houston, Sugar Land, The Woodlands, Pasadena
Energy and petrochemicals on one side, the Texas Medical Center on the other, and a long tail of companies serving both. If you run one of them, you generate instrumented data at a volume where an AI answer without its source is unusable, and a regulator will eventually ask how a number was reached.
AzureTechFabric is a Databricks partner with an award-winning Databricks engineering team, 80 of them Databricks-certified, and a Temporal partner. Where a system reaches past the workspace we build on Azure, AWS and Google Cloud.
What ai consulting and development covers
Agents that hold state
A task that runs for three days, calls six systems and waits twice on a person cannot live in a request handler. We build agents on a durable runtime, so a deploy in the middle of a run does not lose the run, and a retry does not send the same email twice.
Retrieval that cites what it used
An answer nobody can trace is an answer nobody can defend. Retrieval is built so every response carries the documents behind it.
Evaluation, before and after
Without a score, every prompt change is a matter of opinion. We put deterministic scorers and model-based judges in front of the thing so a change ships with a number attached rather than with a feeling.
Human approval where it belongs
Some actions should stop and wait for a person. That gate is part of the system rather than a policy document, so an agent that wants to issue a refund pauses, the approval is recorded, and the run picks up where it left off.
Cost you can see
Model spend, retrieval infrastructure and the review time a system still needs are the numbers that decide whether it stays live after the first quarter. They get instrumented at build time, not discovered on an invoice.
Governed data access
An agent reads through the same grants a person would. On Databricks that is Unity Catalog, so a model that tries to reach a table it has no grant for fails the way any principal fails, rather than because the prompt asked it nicely.
AI consulting in Houston
In Houston, AI consulting starts with instrumented data and the regulator behind it. Energy operators and the Texas Medical Center both need answers that cite the reading or the record, so we assess source quality and citation needs first and recommend use cases in the order the data can support.
Two regulators can share one platform
Two of Houston's large producers of data answer to different rulebooks. A pipeline operator on the Ship Channel keeps integrity records that PHMSA audits under 49 CFR Parts 192 and 195. A sponsor running trials in the Texas Medical Center keeps electronic records under the FDA's 21 CFR Part 11, with HIPAA over the patient data, and the service firms working for both hold records under each.
The usual answer is a platform per regulator, and we'd argue against it every time. Two stacks double the audit surface, drift apart, and leave a reconciliation report between them that becomes the first thing an inspector asks about. We'd rather run one runtime and evaluate policy per action, so a Part 11 signature and a pipeline inspection record are different checkpoints on the same system.
The first two weeks produce a table before they produce code. Every action that touches regulated data gets a row naming the rule that governs it and whether it needs a recorded signature, a person's approval or only a log entry. The pipeline is built against that table, which means the audit trail exists from the first run instead of being reconstructed for the first audit.
Clients we have done this for
Sensor histories and clinical records come from systems that never shared a key, and the pipeline built for Athlinks deals with that shape, stitching more than 400 million athlete records from disparate sources. It runs on Temporal with automated retries and real-time visibility, so a failed step reruns and the run stays observable.
Health & Wellness
Athlinks
Athlinks had more than 400 million athlete records from sources that never agreed on who an athlete was, and a matching run that died halfway through couldn't just start again. Our engineers took the project from prototype to production as a serverless pipeline on AWS with Temporal holding the state. Failed steps now retry on their own, failures reach Slack as they happen, and the matching rules are tuned for each tier.
Also for
How an engagement runs
01
Two weeks, fixed fee
An AI Readiness Assessment reads what you already run, names the use cases that will survive your data and your permissions, and puts a number on what each will cost to operate. It ends in a written document that is yours either way.
02
One system, named
We pick the first thing to build with you and say what done looks like before starting. A first system that reaches production beats three that reach a demo.
03
Build it with your team
Your engineers are in the repository with ours from the first week. The pattern has to be one they can extend after we leave, which does not happen if they meet it at handover.
04
Run it, then hand it over
We stay on the pager while it settles, because the design decisions look different when the person making them is the one being woken. Handover happens when it is boring, not when the invoice is due.
Two weeks, fixed fee, and a written plan whether or not you build it with us.
Tell an engineer what you want to build
A senior engineer reads it and replies within one business day, usually with the questions that decide the first two weeks.
Around Houston
Working AI, shown live around Houston
AI Tinkerers Houston asks people to bring a working system instead of slides, curates its guest list and meets most months on a Tuesday evening. The Ion, Rice University's innovation district in Midtown, keeps a public calendar of tech meetups and houses Greentown Labs, and the University of Houston's Hewlett Packard Enterprise Data Science Institute runs AI micro-credentials aimed at the region's industrial workforce.
An agent at a refinery or a hospital earns trust from the operators and nurses who check its answers, and UH's micro-credentials are built for Houston's industrial workforce rather than for data scientists. Whatever you put into production should stop for that engineer before it changes anything on a unit, and should come with the evaluation showing it got better from one release to the next.
The Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands metro area. Texas: Austin, Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Liberty, Montgomery, San Jacinto and Waller counties.
Lighter shape: the city itself. Dot: downtown. County boundaries from the US Census Bureau, 2023.
Meetup · Monthly, usually a Tuesday evening
AI Tinkerers Houston
Curated Tuesday evenings where every presenter runs a live system, a direct way to meet engineers who could take an energy or clinical pilot further.
AI Tinkerers, Houston chapter. Houston, venue shared on acceptance.
Conference · 23 to 25 February 2027
Energy HPC & AI Conference 2027
Now in its twentieth year, this is where operators and national labs compare notes on putting AI beside the seismic and reservoir work they already run on clusters.
Ken Kennedy Institute, Rice University. BioScience Research Collaborative, 6500 Main St, Texas Medical Center.
University · Ongoing
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Data Science Institute, University of Houston
If plant operators will use your agent, read the AI micro-credentials this institute teaches the region's industrial workforce, because that's what those operators will expect.
University of Houston. University of Houston, Houston.
Hub · Ongoing, with a public events calendar
Ion District
Greentown Labs' climate startups work from the same building, so the Ion's public calendar is a quick way to see who's building AI for energy.
Rice University. The Ion, Midtown Houston.
Conference · 4 to 5 December 2026
Day of Data and AI - Houston
Volunteer speakers give every talk, so expect practitioners describing their own data estates, and use the pre-conference sessions to go deep on one problem.
Volunteer organisers. Houston, venue announced to registrants.
More in Houston (2)
- AfroTech Conference 2026
A large multi-day technology conference across several stages, with tracks including artificial intelligence and engineering, entrepreneurship and professional development.
2 to 6 November 2026. George R. Brown Convention Center, Downtown Houston.
- Master of Data Science, Rice University
A full-time, 31-credit professional data science master's without a thesis, taught over three consecutive semesters on campus. An online version is also offered.
Ongoing degree programme. Rice University, Houston, and online.
Each listing was checked on its organiser's own page on 12 October 2026. Dates and venues move, so the link is the source.
FAQ
AI consulting and development in Houston: common questions
Do you work with Houston companies?
Yes, and with companies across the United States. Arizona does not observe daylight saving, so we are one hour behind you from November to March and two hours behind from March to November. A morning standup on your clock is still early afternoon on ours.
Do you have an office in Houston?
The office is in Gilbert, Arizona, with teams in Amsterdam, Dnipro and Hyderabad. Delivery is remote or hybrid, and we travel for discovery, workshops and the opening weeks of a build.
We have both energy operations and clinical research. One platform?
Yes, and without a fork. Policy is evaluated per action rather than per application, so two regimes with different rules run on the same runtime with different checkpoints enforced. Maintaining two platforms to satisfy two regulators is the expensive way to solve this.
What kind of AI development do you do?
Agents that carry state across a long task, retrieval that cites what it used, workflow automation that survives a restart, and the evaluation that tells you whether any of it got better. The common thread is that it has to run unattended and be explainable afterwards, which is a different problem from getting a good answer once.
How does an AI engagement start?
Usually with something short and fixed so the cost is known before you commit. The AI Readiness Assessment runs two weeks for a fixed fee and ends with a written deliverable that is yours whether or not you continue.
Also in Houston
What else we build for Houston companies.
Software development in Houston
Your operations run on software nobody can change quickly, and your own engineers are booked until next year.
Databricks consulting in Houston
Instrumented data at volume breaks a warehouse's cost model long before it breaks its schema.
App development in Houston
Your app has a launch date and no team to build it, and the version from the pilot slows down once real users and live sensor data arrive.
AI consulting and development elsewhere
The same work, in other metros. The full list is here.
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