Today we’d like to introduce you to Vasili Borissov.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I am the CEO, Founder, and Chairman of Cool Edge Bits Inc., a Houston-based PDC drill bit manufacturing company. My journey as an entrepreneur has been multi-faceted, spanning professional sports, home healthcare, tech, sales/marketing and now, energy technology.
I was born in Russia and immigrated to the United States when I was nine years old in the early 90’s. My early life was defined by tennis, a sport I started playing at age five. I worked hard to become a highly ranked junior player—eventually reaching #1 in Texas and the top 10 in the nation. I turned professional and later transitioned into coaching, building a strong foundation in the Houston tennis community.
Beyond sports, I have built businesses across many different sectors. Today, I juggle a demanding work life with a large family having 5 kids and 4 dogs, while launching and scaling Cool Edge Bits. My drive to enter the oil and gas industry is deeply rooted in my family’s legacy. My father, Dr. Anatoli Borissov, is a world-renowned rocket scientist, thermophysicist, and inventor with 40+ U.S. and World patents in rocket science, combustion, mass heat transfer and energy conversion systems. Together, we applied aerospace engineering principles to completely redesign the PDC drill bit from the ground up, solving the industry’s biggest pain point: heat.
I am also deeply committed to giving back. I founded a nonprofit organization called PeaceHopeFreedom, which provides humanitarian relief to communities affected by war and natural disasters. Inspired by personal connections (being my wife) to the conflict in Ukraine, the initiative also extends to underserved communities through sports and education programs.
Ultimately, my mission is to combine high performance with purpose—building a company that delivers measurable drilling efficiency gains while making a positive impact far beyond the energy industry.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Has it been a smooth road? Not at all. Disrupting a legacy industry is never easy, and our journey with Cool Edge Bits has been full of challenges.
When you come into the oil and gas sector with a completely new approach—especially one inspired by aerospace engineering and rocket science—you are immediately met with skepticism. The drilling industry is deeply rooted in tradition. People are used to doing things a certain way, and convincing seasoned drilling engineers and superintendents to trust a new, unproven technology over the standard PDC bits they’ve relied on for decades was our first major hurdle. We had to prove that our cooling technology wasn’t just a theoretical concept, but a practical solution that could survive the harshest downhole environments.
Building credibility took time. We couldn’t just talk about reducing heat by almost 2X or doubling the rate of penetration; we had to show the data. Getting those initial field trials, putting our bits in the ground, and proving that our directional nozzles actually prevented overheating and extended cutter life was a grueling process. Every test was high-stakes because in this industry, downtime costs money, and nobody wants to be the guinea pig for a failed experiment.
Beyond the technology itself, we faced the typical struggles of scaling a hardware startup. Manufacturing advanced drill bits requires precision, capital, and a highly skilled team. We had to navigate complex supply chain issues, manage team dynamics, and even deal with the impact of tariffs and shifting geopolitical landscapes on material costs.
Transitioning from my background in professional tennis, sports, tech, sales and marketing, home healthcare, running a nonprofit and moving into the highly technical world of oil and gas was a steep learning curve for me personally. But thanks to my mother and father engineering is in my blood and just like in sports, you learn to adapt, battle, iterate, and push through the friction. The struggles were necessary. They forced us to refine our designs, back up our claims with undeniable data, and ultimately build a product that is now changing the way America drills.
To sum it all up it hasn’t been smooth, obstacles and challenges have been growing our customer pipeline, raising capital, hiring, maintaining margins dealing with our vendors and data engineering.
As you know, we’re big fans of Cool Edge Bits. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Cool Edge Bits Inc. is a Houston, Texas-based startup operating in the upstream oil and gas industry, specializing in the design, manufacturing, sales, and rental of PDC (Polycrystalline Diamond Compact) drill bits. The company was founded by Vasili Borissov, a thermophysics expert whose father is the inventor of the technology, Dr. Anatoli Borissov is a former rocket scientist. The company was formed at the end of 2023, with commercial manufacturing and sales launching in 2024.
What sets Cool Edge Bits apart is its patented cooling technology, which applies aerospace and rocket science principles — specifically Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) — to drill bit design. Their directional nozzle system focuses cooling fluid directly onto the cutting edge, reducing heat by up to 45% compared to standard PDC bits. This results in improved rate of penetration, longer bit life, smaller and cleaner cuttings, and greater drilling stability.
The company started as family-owned and is growing into
a disruptor in the energy space with a multidisciplinary team spanning physics, engineering, geology, drilling operations, and sales. Cool Edge Bits has received positive field feedback from operations in South Texas, East Texas, West Texas, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and the MENA region, and is an active participant in energy innovation events such as the NAPE Expo and CERAWeek.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
In sports we say great players create their own luck, and the Good Lord above always provides the right opportunities to live out His will for our lives so it’s our job to combine talent with hard work to capitalize on these opportunities. Bad luck is simply an opportunity to learn a lesson and become better as a human and a growing business.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.cooledgebits.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vasili-borissov-6b083b215/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheCuttingEdgePodcast-CEB
