The Virginia-based Lighthouse Network hosted its first investor roadshow in Wilmington this week, in collaboration with Idea Fund Partners, Launch Chapel Hill and the Regional Accelerator and Mentoring Program (RAMP). 

The event, held Wednesday evening at UNCW’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, brought North Carolina- and Virginia-based startups before investors, with pitches spanning medical devices, energy biotech, legal software and more. 

“North Carolina tends to move money better than Virginia when it comes to investments in startups,” said Debbie Irwin, executive director of the Lighthouse Network. 

Wilmington startups that presented included Koolbridge Energy, Skillmaker.ai, XTND, Predicate and Nuream, with four of the five companies seeking funding ranging from $250,000 to $3 million. 

Koolbridge Energy, a Wrightsville Beach-based company, manufactures a Smart Load Center, an energy management system designed to seamlessly navigate power sources based on times of day, battery state, weather and other factors. The product was designed to address extended power outages in the aftermath of hurricanes. 

CEO and president Bill Griffin presented a pitch asking for $2.1 million for sales and marketing, engineering and working capital. The company projects nearly $60 million in revenue in 2029 and described a longer-term goal of reaching $450 million in revenue.

The company currently has over 30 U.S. patents and patent-pending applications. According to Griffin, a local manufacturing partner has manufactured its products, with the first products sold in September. 

Robin Cowie, CEO of Carolina Beach-based Skillmaker.ai, also presented during the event but said the company is not currently raising money. This summer, the AI workforce training company closed an oversubscribed $4.5 million seed round. The company is currently deploying its auto tech training program, the NAPA Autotech Xccelerator, in partnership with NAPA Auto Care. The program can cut the time to train an entry-level auto technician from two years to 25 days, according to Cowie.

XTND, a legal billing software firm, presented at the event, asking for $2.2 million to expand implementation and customer support, build direct sales and marketing and further develop product and AI capabilities. The company offers billing solutions for insurance defense law firms, including an integrated software system, insights, automations and workflows to improve efficiency. 

In August, XTND announced a strategic partnership with Clio, a legal AI platform. The company was also selected as a semi-finalist in NC IDEA’s fall 2026 SEED grant cycle, one of 19 companies competing for a $50,000 grants. 

According to Kirsti Elliott, co-founder and CEO, the company currently has eight firms on its platform and $442,000 in contracted annual recurring revenue, up from $340,000, with an average deal size of about $77,000. 

Predicate, a Wilmington-based healthcare technology company, also presented at the event. It received a patent for its artificial intelligence platform earlier this year. 

Predicate’s flagship product, OpenDx, is an AI software platform that uses data to help healthcare providers diagnose critical illness. It makes up the underlying infrastructure for the company’s other product lines and collects data from patients’ wearable devices. 

Morris Nguyen, founder and CEO of Predicate, said the company validated its technology using more than 385,000 emergency-room encounters, reporting a 15% reduction in false alerts and about 90% accuracy in detecting deterioration. 

“We’re not creating another wearable. We’re not selling another dashboard to a hospital,” Nguyen said. “We are creating the intelligence that consumes all of that data and makes sense for the clinician to act on.”

According to Nguyen, Predicate is starting a study at Tampa General Hospital on Dec. 1, supported by TGH Ventures, and is in early discussions with a large wearable manufacturer. The company is seeking $250,000 in bridge capital for six months of technical readiness, clinical validation and commercial conversion, which Nguyen said is separate from a larger $5 million planned round.

Rob Cooley, co-founder and CEO of Wilmington-based sleep tech company Nuream, also presented, asking for $3 million to develop the company’s technology and data-science capabilities. 

The company is developing a sensor-embedded pillowcase designed to measure the brain’s electrical activity during sleep. The fabric-as-a-sensor technology uses electroencephalography (EEG) sensors to collect brainwave data, which the company plans to analyze with AI-powered software and dashboards so users and organizations can understand sleep patterns and long-term trends.

“We provide the right information with zero burden, zero change in human behavior,” Cooley said of the company’s minimally disruptive sleep technology.

Nuream, which received grant funding from NC IDEA and NCInnovation this year, is projected to reach more than $80 million in revenue by year five, Cooley said.