A Houston robotics startup took the top prize at one of the oil and gas industry's main startup showcases. Agellus Tank Robotics won the Best in Show award and $10,000 at the 10th annual Energy Startup Village Competition, held October 22 in Houston during the Society of Petroleum Engineers' Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE).
What Agellus Does
Aboveground storage tanks hold crude, fuel, and chemicals at refineries, terminals, and tank farms. They have to be cleaned and inspected regularly, and the traditional way is expensive: take the tank out of service, drain it, and send workers into a hazardous confined space to remove sludge and check the floor.
Agellus builds AI-powered submersible robots that do that work while the tank stays in service. The company says its robots assess, clean, inspect, and maintain tanks without shutting them down. Its technology list includes robots built for hazardous locations, machine vision, sludge cleaning and oil recovery, and phased-array ultrasonic testing for inspection. It also offers out-of-service work such as 3D scanning and floor inspection.
The company is based in northwest Houston and is led by CEO Kweku Sekyiamah. Its website shows the logos of major energy companies as clients but does not detail individual contracts.
A Crowded, Useful Niche
Houston is home to several companies working on the same problem from different angles. Square Robot sends a submersible robot into in-service tanks for floor inspection, including hot ones, and Pike Robotics has a crawler for tank walls. The appeal is the same in each case: tank downtime is costly, confined-space entry is one of the most dangerous jobs in the industry, and a robot that removes both is easy to justify.
The Rest of the Field
Two other companies won $1,000 Rising Star awards: Resollant, which makes reactors that produce hydrogen and solid graphite without emissions, and Neolift, an Argentine company building intelligent artificial-lift systems for wells in the Vaca Muerta shale. Neolift also took the $500 People's Choice award, and was the competition's first Argentine competitor and winner.
Based on reporting by the Journal of Petroleum Technology (SPE), October 23, 2026, and Agellus Tank Robotics' website.