Below is a description of the event and relevant recognitions.
Click here to jump to the 2026 honorees.
Click here to jump to photos from the event.
On Thursday night, GrepBeat hosted its sixth annual “Startups To Watch” event, revealing and celebrating some of the most promising early-stage startups from across the entire state of North Carolina. For the first time, we held the event at Durham’s Bay 7, where we welcomed 100+ attendees—including founders, startup teams, investors, and other supporters—to reveal and celebrate this year’s class of honorees.
Before we go any further recapping the event itself, Team GrepBeat wants to extend one last thank you to the sponsors that helped make this year’s “Startups to Watch” possible: Hutchison, EisnerAmper, Whitley Recruiting, Curious Ant, and NC IDEA. We also want to thank Rocky Top Catering, particularly for for shrimp in a cup and bacon-wrapped dates, Corey Truesdale of One TrueShot Photography for capturing the evening (catch those photos below), and of course the fine folks at Bay 7 for being so easy to work with.
It’s also important to thank all of the readers and founders who nominated startups this year. We saw 87 nominations come through* before passing things along to our independent battalion of judges. Come to think of it, they also need to be thanked, so our gratitude to NC IDEA’s Amy Bastian, Launch Chapel Hill’s Emil Runge, Innovate Charlotte’s Juan Garzón, CED’s Preet Mankad, and Curious Ant’s Robert Birnbach.
Those judges sifted through the nominees that best fit our criteria (only early-stage tech and tech-enabled startups—no agencies, life science, or biotech), made their picks, and helped us come to a group of 11 companies to cement as members of this award’s increasingly impressive legacy.
Here, at last, are the selections we saw honored at Thursday night’s show….
2026 Startups to Watch Honorees
HQ: Wake Forest
Year Founded: 2025
CEO: Brandon Zschokke
Description: Phaseshift is addressing the fact that in an ever-expanding field of industrial assets, data is continually being trapped in proprietary systems. Beginning with grid-scale battery storage—but with a platform they stress is asset-agnostic—this team can work with any machine to turn its raw telemetry into usable data. It then brings agents into the equation to assess that data, identify issues, and generate reports.
In roughly a year in the market, they’ve deployed their tech on 17 live sites with battery storage on their platform amounting to enough energy to power over 50,000 average U.S. homes for a day.
HQ: Raleigh
Year Founded: 2024
CEO: Daveed Gartenstein-Ross
Description: This startup is helping organizations of all kinds train for real-world scenarios and high-stakes decision-making through interactive digital experiences. The company’s platform, “Providence,” supports the rapid creation of customized, AI-driven simulations that have already been successfully applied everywhere from K-12 educational institutions, to government agencies, to Fortune 100 companies.
That growth across sectors has occurred in short time. In fact, ExpertTheory’s customer base as of this writing is nearly triple what it was at the end of its first year, in 2024.
HQ: Durham
Year Founded: 2024
CEO: Chip Kennedy
Description: CivicReach has a straightforward premise: building voice AI technology for the agencies and nonprofits that run America’s social safety net. Specifically, they work with state and local governments as well as nonprofits to provide technology that helps social workers and case workers better focus on serving those who need their help.
Since its founding in 2024, this startup has (as of this writing) grown to a point of assisting offices and agencies across six states, serving almost 20 customers and covering nearly 10 million residents.
(Learn more in our past feature on CivicReach, and catch CEO Chip Kennedy’s latest In The Soup appearance.)
HQ: Raleigh
Year Founded: 2024
CEO: Austin Carroll
Description: This emerging Durham startup bills itself as the “AI agent for marketing compliance.” Their multi-faceted platform reviews digital materials for brand and regulatory compliance, tracks approvals, and maintains audit-ready records—while also assisting with the creation of certain assets, such as employee social posts.
Since its founding in 2024, Warrant has made the rounds in top accelerators including ICBA and Techstars, raising $1.2 million in pre-seed funding along the way. They’ve doubled their headcount in the six months leading up to “Startups to Watch.”
(Learn more in our past feature on Warrant.)
HQ: Winston-Salem
Year Founded: 2020
CEO: David Kaszycki
Description: Live event, professional AV, and broadcast assets have become interconnected devices attached to corporate IT networks and cloud and AI providers. Beam Dynamics connects the financial, operational, and security information for each asset and license and then applies a proprietary data layer—helping to tie together information from thousands of vendors to help operators identify security concerns, cost-saving opportunities, and more.
This team saw its revenue more than double from 2024 to 2025, and is on track to do the same in 2026. They’ve seen zero logo churn since going to market and as of “Startups to Watch” have upwards of 30 active accounts.
(Learn more in our past feature on Beam Dynamics.)
HQ: Durham
Year Founded: 2025
Chief Evangelist: Lochlainn Byrne
Description: This startup is doing extensive work to enhance the very kinds of events that this ecosystem so often revolves around. They’re doing that by providing an AI-native event experience platform that captures what’s said on stages and in panel discussions and turns it into accessible content via summaries, insights, and more. The results extend event value, drive engagement, and can even attract sponsors for future events.
This startup had its first paying customer in 2025 and quickly grew to over $1 million in revenue, approaching 100 events, 200,000 attendees, and 1,500 exhibitors served.
HQ: Chapel Hill
Year Founded: 2024
Chief Evangelist: Ellora McTaggart
Description: Carolina Instruments was actually built atop a foundation of neuroscience research at UNC-Chapel Hill. Today, the startup is developing camera-free eye-tracking capability for smart eyewear. Specifically, they replace the eye-facing cameras typically used in this process with low-cost optical sensors that enable smart glasses to monitor eye movement and pupil dynamics for numerous real-world applications without negatively impacting battery life or device design the way those eye-facing cameras tend to do.
Though still early from a commercial standpoint, this startup has stood out in several local accelerators and events, securing nearly $1 million in non-dilutive funding, and entering co-development phases with numerous major companies in the smart eyewear space.
(Learn more in our past feature on Carolina Instruments, and catch CEO Ellora McTaggart in her In The Soup appearance.)
HQ: Creston (Boone)
Year Founded: 2020
Chief Evangelist: Max Rünzel
Description: Hailing from just outside of Boone, HiveTracks is building the data infrastructure layer for biodiversity—with an assist from our fuzzy little friends, the bees. Specifically, they provide a mobile app and AI-powered image analysis to help beekeepers and land stewards collect data concerning plant and pollinator biodiversity. This data in turn is used by developers, agricultural operators, and others to measure biodiversity outcomes as they relate to land use, supply chain sustainability, and environmental remediation.
HiveTracks has seen its team, community, and business grow steadily. Their “beekeeper network” now consists of over 17,000 contributors across 145 countries, with month-over-month active user growth and average contract value per site both on the rise.
(Learn more in our past feature on HiveTracks.)
HQ: Cary
Year Founded: 2024
Chief Evangelist: Paul Rava
Description: Roboro presents an AI-native platform that is built to empower government relations professionals, organizations, and individuals with access to the legislative insights they need to conduct political advocacy. Essentially, they’re rapidly turning complex policy into real-time, actionable intelligence to change how relevant people and organizations engage with public policy.
Founded in Cary in 2024, this startup has grown its headcount, expanded services to all 50 states, and is now working with partners including AmLaw 100 firms, multibillion-dollar organizations, nonprofits, and our very own North Carolina governor’s office.
(Learn more in our past feature on Roboro, and catch CEO Paul Rava’s episode of The Side Quest.)
HQ: Apex
Year Founded: 2025
Chief Evangelist: Cory Evans
Description: Clinware is, as they put it, tackling multibillion-dollar inefficiencies in post-acute and skilled nursing transitions. Specifically, their AI software solutions replace fragmented manual workflows and automate post-acute care reimbursement, referral, and admission processes and end-to-end healthcare operations. This in turn enables teams to make efficient, data-driven decisions where both clinical and financial matters are concerned.
In just over a year since launching their software, this team reached nearly $2 million in ARR across 21 accounts and 278 live facilities. They’ve also grown to 35 employees operating around the world and have additional contracts in review and negotiations that are poised to significantly multiply existing ARR.
HQ: Winston-Salem
Year Founded: 2020
Chief Evangelist: Amy Dunlap
Description: The Stemz team is on a mission to connect the country’s regional flower economies. They’re doing this by building distribution infrastructure and technology to that establishes reliable supply chains for regional growers. With some 80% of cut flowers sold in the U.S. being imported, this technology is a solution that helps florists source fresh, high-quality, local flowers and helps farms access larger markets without being solely responsible for hands-on sales or delivery.
This company has grown steadily year-over-year since its founding in 2020—increasing revenue by 60% from 2024 to 2025 and matching its 2024 number in just the first five months of 2026. They now serve 40 flower farms across the Carolinas, Virginia, and Tennessee, and have validated a regional hub model enabling expansion into new metropolitan markets.
Photos from Startups to Watch
