Standout of the week
Freight Hero
AI-plus-human back office for freight brokerages.
Closed a $5M seed led by Field Ventures, taking total funding past $6M.
AI-plus-human freight-broker back office. The company says total funding now exceeds $6M. The release carries a Durham dateline and Axios calls the company Durham-based, reversing an earlier Palo Alto classification; legal-address confirmation is still pending. Flybridge Capital, Tip Top VC, and Front Porch Venture Partners joined the round.
What you should know
The Alchemy Lab, a bootstrapped three-person Durham startup, reports more than 70 active users for Aurum, its operational-maturity roadmap product, ahead of an official launch later this year.
Climbit reports more than 6,000 monthly active users after app traffic quadrupled over 12 months; Kaya and TheCrag use it as a weather resource.
Teamworks says TCU selected its Player Personnel product for self-scouting, advanced scouting, and transfer-portal evaluation; no contract value was disclosed.
Correction to the record: Solvata is Raleigh-based, not Cary, per its own site and GrepBeat, which also confirm Jeff Hampson as co-founder and CTO.
Moment
Scale Social AI
Pivoted from restaurant marketing to Fortune 500 brands and nearly doubled headcount.
Scale Social AI pivoted from restaurant marketing to Fortune 500 brands, grew from 8 to 14 employees in a year, and says break-even is possible by the end of 2026. The company raised a $1.3M pre-seed in November 2025 led by Jason Calacanis after graduating from his Founder University accelerator, with NC Tweener Fund, Primordial Ventures, and RTP Angel Fund participating.
Deep dives
Capital
1 rounds
One disclosed round in the window, and the participant list runs deeper than the lead: Flybridge, Tip Top VC, and Front Porch all came in behind Field Ventures.
Coming up
Triangle
NC IDEA Fall 2026 MICRO and SEED applications close
MICRO ($10K) and SEED ($50K) non-dilutive grants.
Triangle
NC IDEA Foundations program applications close
The day after the MICRO and SEED deadline.