NC IDEA announced the winners of its fall grant SEED and MICRO cycles Thursday during its annual Ecosystem Summit conference, held Thursday and Friday in Wrightsville Beach.

Two Wilmington-based companies were among the 22 winners: XTND, a legal billing software firm, and WolfSky RF Sensing Systems, an early-stage aerospace and defense startup spun out of NC State research. 

XTND was one of seven startups to win an NC IDEA SEED grant of $50,000 in a multi-stage selection process. Earlier this year, the company announced a strategic partnership with Clio, a leading legal AI platform.

"This funding comes at a pivotal time and will help us accelerate our go-to-market efforts, expand our customer base, and build momentum toward our first seed funding round," XTND co-founder and CEO Kirsti Elliott said in an email to the Business Journal on Friday.

"We're incredibly grateful for NC IDEA's belief in our vision and the support they provide to entrepreneurs across the state," she added. "We feel truly blessed to be building a business in North Carolina, where organizations like NC IDEA and the incredible entrepreneurial community in Wilmington work together to connect founders with the resources, mentorship, and opportunities they need to succeed."

WolfSky, co-founded by Wilmington resident Cole Dickerson, who serves as CEO, received a $10,000 NC IDEA MICRO grant, along with 14 other early-stage North Carolina-based startups. In addition to funding, the company will participate in an eight-week customer discovery and product launch program. 

“At NC IDEA, we believe great companies can start anywhere in North Carolina,” said NC IDEA board chair Spencer Disher during the event, “and with the right support … can change a founder’s trajectory.” 

The full list of North Carolina companies awarded MICRO and SEED grants as part of NC IDEA’s 2026 fall cycle is available here. 

The grant announcement came after a full day of panel and speaker discussions, featuring remarks from Thom Ruhe, president and CEO of NC IDEA,  Rob Cooley, co-founder and CEO of Nuream, and Dane Stangler, senior advisor at the Global Entrepreneurship Network.

“The greatest natural resource on the planet is the entrepreneurial potential of all of our people,” said Ruhe during his opening remarks. 

According to Ruhe, NC IDEA had made more than 1,100 grants totaling roughly $24.5 million over the past 11 years, with around 66% of supported companies being minority-, rural- or woman-founded.  Ruhe also discussed the organization's plans to extend its portfolio to rural counties using a $10 million grant from the Golden LEAF Foundation. 

Beyond the grant announcements, the first day of the conference featured discussions about North Carolina’s unique entrepreneurial ecosystem and highlighted various Wilmington-based entrepreneurs. 

Following Ruhe’s remarks, Sandbar Oyster Company, led by CEO and co-founder Niels Lindquist and his daughter, Marae West, chief operating officer, shared updates on the company’s recent growth and momentum. The firm, which has a location in Leland, manufactures and installs living shoreline products and is taking on larger projects, expanding its market and developing new products.

“We’re not only scaling up in our production, but also in our geographic range,” West said during the conference. 

She added, “North Carolina is our hub. We want to build almost everything here and ship it wherever it can go.”

Cooley and Scott Monroe, co-founder and CEO of Wilmington-based Essential Personnel, a performance management and wellness software for public safety agencies, discussed their experiences building businesses as veterans in North Carolina.  

In a panel called Wilmington’s ‘family tree’ of entrepreneurship, Jim Roberts, founder of the Network for Entrepreneurs in Wilmington (NEW), led a discussion with Kay Anderson, senior vice president and director of emerging markets at Live Oak Bank; Jonathan Rowe, former chief marketing officer at nCino; and Evan Travis, managing director of venture banking at Live Oak Bank. 

“We’re working our tails off to build a real economy that North Carolina can be proud of,” Roberts said. He emphasized that Wilmington ranked in the top five U.S. metros for job growth over the past 10 years, and specifically ranked No. 3 for white-collar job growth in the same period. 

“We’re creating the jobs that the college graduates want,” he said, “and we can now retain the UNCW grads, and we can keep them here.”

On Friday, the conference featured remarks from Sophie Dagenais, CEO and president of the New Hanover Community Endowment; Sen. Michael Lee; Golden LEAF Foundation President and CEO Scott Hamilton and Daniel Yohannes, CEO of Winston-Salem-based Renaissance Fiber, as well as a panel discussion on New Hanover County’s innovation assets.