It’s a testament to the entrepreneurial support offered across the North Carolina ecosystem that there always seem to be headlines concerning emerging startups securing grants or other funds. It’s not too often, however, that two such headlines concern the same startup in a single week.
Such was the case for Wilmington’s Nuream last week. In the span of just a few days, the startup announced that it had received both a portion of $7.9M in funding deployed by NCInnovation and a $50K SEED grant from NC IDEA.
When GrepBeat initially covered Nuream in January of 2025, we were just learning about the concept of the “fabric-as-a-sensor” technology they were developing—essentially to equip pillowcases, shirts, and more with the ability to detect brain waves and measure sleep tendencies. In the time since, that technology has come into sharper focus.
Co-Founder and CEO Rob Cooley described Nuream today as “a novel digital health, biosensing and data company.” Their Fabric-as-a-Sensor (FaaS) tech helps them “seamlessly collet brain and heart biosignals longitudinally for the first time,” which Cooley said delivers the proprietary data and intelligence necessary to solve the sleep epidemic.
But that’s only a starting point. Over the long term, the same data can now be assessed to provide early alerts concerning debilitating neurodegenerative diseases like dementia, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, depression, and more. In short, Nuream’s tech can both improve your sleep and guard you against serious health complications.
NCInnovation & NC IDEA funds
The NCInnovation announcement concerned $7.9M in total funding spread across nine university-based applied research projects in North Carolina. Nuream’s involvement was tied to UNC Wilmington, and amounted to a little over $1M out of the total.
“We have been collaborating with UNCW researchers and students for over a year now assessing and testing our Nuream Prototype 1A and 2A,” said Cooley…. “We are now extending this collaboration to the Nuream data and intelligence layer components, critical to accelerate commercialization.
“We want to redefine what a successful public/private partnership can look like in today’s dynamic environment,” he added. “The NCInnovation funding helps this collaboration get there faster.”
Cooley expressed his team’s gratitude to the NCInnovation team for its support.
As for the $50K NC IDEA SEED grant, the win for Nuream was a reward for perseverance—as well as an example of what can come of the support offered by an organization like NC IDEA.
“We applied three other times in the past and were not selected,” Cooley said. To hear him tell it, however, these past attempts were legitimate learning opportunities.
“Each application brought us great insight, external review and direct recommendations for improvement,” he said. “We listened acutely to our reviewers’ feedback and made the necessary changes…. We are so excited to be a part of the NC IDEA extended ecosystem now.”
So—what now?
Regarding where and how Nuream will apply the funding that came through last week, Cooley indicated that the SEED funds would go directly to the startup’s next-gen Prototype 3A fabric solutions, “complementing the NCInnovation support to the data and intelligence layer demands.”
“The timing and integration of these two cannot be overstated,” he said. “We do all of this while continuing to raise outside funds and assemble the purpose-built Nuream team that gets us to commercialization, then scale.”
Beyond the direct application of the funds, last week’s double dose of good news served as both validation and motivation for the startup.
“Last week was huge for Nuream in terms of new funds, external tech and consumer validation, pending new early adopter pilot opportunities, extending the NC innovation ecosystem and attracting potential new investors,” Cooley said, adding, “You never expect a week like this.”
It was also clear that while there was immense appreciation for NCInnovation, NC IDEA, and the support an active startup can receive in North Carolina in general (“We should all be fortunate to start companies here,” Cooley noted), the Nuream team also took the wins as fuel.
“[We have to] keep our foot on the gas to go faster… continue to collaborate and accelerate where able with these new opportunities,” Cooley said. “We have so many ‘next steps’ ahead. We quickly celebrated these great wins withour extended Nuream crew because these successes were absolutely a team sport win.
“One of our critical founder ‘why’s’ is to make a difference in the lives of millions. We are a couple steps closer now but much remains.”
As for those next steps, Cooley shared that the immediate future for Nuream will involve working with their federal partner, the Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA) to “design, build and deliver Prototype 3A and an MVP solution.”
That solution will help Nuream refine its data collection and curation and protection and delivery models, as well as build its intelligence layer with the proprietary data it can now deliver at scale.
