Oil and gas companies are gassing up Louisiana’s software-as-a-service market with oodles of cash. 

In-state SaaS firms are generating millions in revenue from energy companies — in Louisiana and around the world. The boom in energy-related business has become a major catalyst in the state’s burgeoning software and cloud computing scene. 

“It’s kind of a perfect storm brewing.”

Geoff Daily, Bifrost

The energy industry has traditionally been somewhat resistant to technological modernization. But oil and gas companies have issues that can be solved through tech innovation, and they’ve begun to build trust and partnerships with local firms, a win-win for both industries.

“There is something about the Louisiana culture that has a willingness to not just go the same way people have been doing things, and a willingness to solve a problem regardless of the rest of the stuff around it,” said Geoff Daily, chief revenue officer and part-owner of Bifrost, a Lafayette-based software company that specializes in bridging complex industrial data systems. “The word I invented a while back is Cajun-uity.”

That Louisiana-style ingenuity has helped make it a go-to source for energy companies in need of software services. 

In the last five years alone, major deals have taken place all over the state. 

Construction software company Procore acquired New Orleans-based Levelset — which provides, among other offerings, regulatory compliance management software used by energy companies — for $500 million in 2021. The following year, Levelset brought in $32 million of the company’s total $720 million in annual revenue, per Procore’s post-acquisition reporting. 

That same year, Susco Solutions, a custom software company based in Metairie with oil and gas clients, had a two-year revenue growth rate of 136% and was named to Inc. Magazine’s 2022 list of the Southwest region’s fastest-growing private companies. In 2025, Susco Solutions made the Inc. Magazine list again, its sixth time.  

Lafayette is also home to business IT firm Techneaux and its offshoot Bifrost, which has raised $9.7 million since being founded in 2021, according to PitchBook. It works almost exclusively with oil and gas companies, which Daily declined to specify.

Bifrost doesn’t plan to go public, according to Daily. So its revenue information is private. But business is going well, he said.

It wasn’t always that way for the company, which launched in 2021. The first couple of years, it was tough finding the right fit in the market. Bifrost has made its way, Daily said, by positioning itself in a niche as a firm that provides tech services for energy providers. 

It’s a narrow but lucrative market, with plenty of huge oil and gas companies to tap. Louisiana, with its experience as a leading state in the nation’s energy sector and its crop of tech talent, is in a unique position to find success.

Louisiana’s energy tech edge

There are a few reasons Louisiana-based software firms like Bifrost are taking off and making big-money deals with energy companies, according to Daily. 

Louisiana, and especially Lafayette, has a large tech talent pool. Business Facilities, which has been churning out economic development reports and rankings since 1968, ranked Louisiana No. 3 in its 2025 Tech Talent Pipeline. 

Plus, the state has experience in the oil and gas industry. Louisiana is a nationally recognized leader in energy, as its 15 oil refineries make up nearly one-sixth of the nation’s entire refining capacity. 

Silicon Valley, an obvious major location to get software services, is not an obvious match for oil and gas companies. Firms out west in the Bay Area tend to align their business dealings with staying green, an ethos that mixes with oil and gas companies like oil and water. 

Then there’s the financial shift. “There’s also the other reality that maybe people don’t want to say out loud,” Daily said. “The traditional oil and gas industry is a shadow of its former self.”

Back in the day, when a barrel of gas was well over $100, energy companies didn’t need to worry about streamlining. 

Now, with prices hovering around $70 a barrel, companies are forced to find ways to be more efficient to remain viable. One way to do so is to adopt tech to handle their data. 

But first, there are a lot of problems, a lot of tech debt that oil and gas companies need to work through. That’s where these tech firms are seizing the moment. 

Some of that ‘Cajun-uity’

One basic way to modernize the energy industry is to reduce the reliance on inefficient staff operations. 

Energy companies traditionally relied on in-person check-ins at sites like wells. Workers would drive hours to record readings and make decisions, then return — a process that was wildly inefficient.

“It’s wildly inefficient,” Daily said. 

Firms like Daily’s Bifrost take advantage of this disconnect by offering ways to track granular information. Like, say, the health of a piece of equipment at a well site. 

This way, software can pick up when equipment is likely to malfunction or break, and the energy company can proactively fix the problem before it causes a bigger issue — like well flares and oil spills. 

The oil and gas industry also has increased regulatory pressure on those issues, for which there are harsh penalties. Avoiding paying out fees has pushed belt-tightening energy companies to be more serious about regulations and more open to using software to ensure compliance. 

Energy companies have been hesitant to share their data in the past, Daily said. And there is pushback from staff who fear software that might make their job obsolete. 

All together, industry factors converged at the right time for SaaS firms to grow, according to Daily.

“It’s kind of a perfect storm brewing,” Daily said.