Three North Texas Companies Top the 2025 Venture Dallas Startup Awards » Dallas Innovates

A digital asset infrastructure company, a physical AI platform, and a 3D instruction technology firm took top honors at the annual Venture Dallas conference.

Venture Dallas announced its 2025 Startup of the Year winners at the George W. Bush Institute and Presidential Library in Dallas on October 30, selecting three companies from a record 140 nominations—the largest and strongest applicant pool in the award’s three-year history, according to Venture Dallas Chair and Perot Jain Partner Aaron Pierce.

StableCore won the Seed category, Worlds took Series A, and BILT claimed Series B and Beyond.

David Evans, managing partner of Sentiero Ventures and member of the Venture Dallas steering committee, presented the awards and explained the selection process. Nominees were divided into three categories based on development stage, then narrowed to 18 finalists. Students from the University of Texas at Dallas prepared one-page deal memos on each finalist for review by guest judges.

Venture Dallas aims to recognize “the best and the brightest of the Dallas startup community,” Evans said.

Co-founded by CEO Alex Treece, COO Nick Elledge, and CTO Eduardo Montemayor, the startup recently closed a $20 million funding round, backed by investors collectively representing more than 290 FDIC-insured institutions. The round included investments from Norwest, BankTech Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Bank of Utah, Curql, EJF Ventures, Bankers Helping Bankers, Peterson Ventures, Reflexive Capital, Stack Asset Management, Ensemble VC, and Naval Ravikant.

The raise was aimed at accelerating StableCore’s push to bring “digital asset core” technology to regional and community institutions that lack the resources to build it themselves, the company said in a September announcement.

StableCore’s platform pulls together pieces like custody, key management, blockchain infrastructure, compliance, orchestration, and ledgering into a single system it describes as a “digital asset core.” The goal is to let banks and credit unions offer stablecoin and digital-asset products, enabling them to compete with challenger fintechs and retain primary financial relationships with customers.

According to Elledge, the team has assembled veterans who previously designed, built, and managed digital asset infrastructure at Coinbase and other major platforms.

Over the past decade, digital financial products have grown into multi-trillion-dollar markets, but most traditional banks and credit unions have largely sat on the sidelines amid unclear U.S. rules, the company noted. This year, after Congress passed the GENIUS Act and federal regulators—including the OCC, FDIC, Federal Reserve Board, and SEC—updated their digital-asset policies, those activities became permissible for roughly 8,500 banks and credit unions across the country, according to StableCore.

On LinkedIn, Elledge described the Venture Dallas win as validation of the company’s core mission.

“StableCore is fundamentally re-architecting the core infrastructure for our financial partners,” he wrote. “We provide the stability, security, and next-generation compliance that allows banks and financial institutions to innovate safely and at scale.”

Elledge shared the company’s focus on supporting local economies. “Supporting our FDIC-insured bank and credit union customers into this new future is exciting and meaningful,” he wrote. “We wake up every day dedicated to supporting the job creators, local businesses, and competition that makes our economy great.”

SMU Cox School of Business also celebrated the win for one of its own. Elledge refined early ideas for StableCore through the school’s Spears entrepreneurship ecosystem.

“From early ideas refined through the Spears ecosystem to building a venture now recognized on the region’s biggest innovation stage, Nick’s journey embodies the entrepreneurial spirit that defines North Texas,” the school said in a social media post congratulating Elledge and co-founder Treece.

The Dallas company has built an AI platform that connects to existing cameras and sensors across large-scale enterprise sites—some spanning up to four square miles—and converts real-time data into live spatial intelligence. Instead of ripping out and replacing infrastructure, Worlds plugs into what’s already there.

Rohde calls it “true sensor fusion at enterprise scale.” In practice, that means Worlds can read cameras, vehicle transponders, badges, and a range of other sensors together, not in isolation. Using an organization’s own unique operational data, the platform creates what the company calls “intelligent environments,” where AI agents can secure, automate, and speed up its physical operations.

Current clients include commercial distribution centers, manufacturing facilities, logistics operations, and mission-critical federal facilities, Worlds said.

“Physical AI is no longer a future technology—it’s happening today,” Copps said in a statement after the win. “It’s giving enterprises the power to see their operations at scale, and unlock transformative gains in productivity, efficiency, and safety.”

Rohde said the technology is “structural change on a massive scale”—not just an incremental upgrade. “2025 is the year physical AI goes mainstream,” he said. 

To his point, the sector is currently drawing heavyweight attention: According to multiple reports this week, Jeff Bezos launched Project Prometheus, a new venture with $6.2 billion in funding aimed at developing “AI for the physical economy” and “industrial-grade” AI for sectors like manufacturing and engineering.

Worlds, founded in 2018 and emerging from stealth in 2020, is backed by Align Capital, Moneta Ventures, GPG Ventures, and strategic investors Chevron Technology Ventures, PIVA Capital, and HM Asset. Copps thanked investors in his acceptance remarks, noting that some had backed him through multiple ventures.

Bryan Chambers, co-founder of Venture Dallas, said the Worlds win reflects more than one company’s momentum. “Worlds represents everything Venture Dallas stands for—radical innovation rooted in North Texas, solving real-world challenges with transformative technology,” he said in a statement. “This recognition isn’t just about one company’s success; it reflects the strength and momentum of our region as a hub for world-changing AI innovation.”

Evans, the Sentiero managing partner who presented the awards, spoke to why Worlds stood out to judges. “When you see a team that has cracked both the technology and the market timing, you recognize something special,” he said. “Worlds has done both. Their ability to deploy AI at true enterprise scale, across existing infrastructure, positions them at the epicenter of a multi-trillion-dollar transformation.”

Copps framed the recognition as a win for the entire Worlds team, including co-founders Rohde and Ross Bates, COO Todd Steitle, CPO Ravi Sathyanna, and CFO Kristin Curreri Frost. On LinkedIn, he wrote: “Every team member at Worlds is all-in on creating something great together, and I could not be more proud of you.”

The Grapevine-based company began a decade ago with a simple insight: paper instructions were failing users. The concept first took shape after a software sales executive struggled to assemble a sandbox in 2012 and wondered why consumer products didn’t have the same 3D guidance used in aerospace. A prototype built at SAP’s innovation incubator led to BILT spinning out of SAP in 2016. Dallas Innovates named BILT to its Future 50 list in 2023, recognizing the company’s distinctive position as a disruptor in its space.

Today, BILT works with manufacturers to turn assembly, installation, setup, maintenance, and repair into step-by-step 3D instructions that help customers work at their own pace. Brands provide the instructions at no cost to users because they reduce returns, lighten support volume, and improve overall satisfaction, the company says.

In addition to consumer products, BILT serves professional technicians and field crews, who can use its digital work instructions on tablets, phones, or the Apple Vision Pro to standardize complex procedures, speed onboarding and training, and reduce errors on the job.

BILT has increasingly become a partner in the federal space. The company was one of three Texas firms selected for an AFWERX Strategic Funding Increase in 2025 and later secured a $15 million STRATFI contract to move its platform from prototype to everyday use by U.S. Air Force maintainers.

As the company scales its work with commercial and government customers, BILT recently hired Chief Technology Officer Mitch Dawson to advance platform innovation amid heightened cybersecurity requirements. Chairman and CEO Nate Henderson described the hire as “a transformative moment for BILT,” saying Dawson “brings the technical depth and leadership experience critical to accelerating our AI strategy.”

Dawson described the company’s approach as “Instructions as a Service.”

“We’re reimagining instructions as intelligent, interactive experiences,” he said. The platform’s AI-driven capabilities are designed to make instructions adaptive for end users and “efficient to produce, maintain, and deploy across industries.”