As of 2022[update], it is completed through 6.81 miles (10.96 km) eastern Guilford County, through a concurrency with I-840 along the Greensboro Urban Loop.

[2] While fully funded, the project is divided into schedule to begin in 2020 with two interchanges located within Guilford and Rockingham counties.

The designation was approved in 1997 at the request of a coalition of counties in North Carolina and Virginia who saw it as a way of further developing that area's economy.

Given that in the spring of 2006 NCDOT put up mileposts and added numbers to exit signs from Reidsville to the Virginia border reflecting US 29's mileage, an upgrade of this highway to an Interstate apparently was not in their immediate plans.

[4][5] On July 31, 2013, NCDOT got approval from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to cosign the first section of I-785 with I-840 in eastern Guilford County officially establishing I-785 in North Carolina.

[15] The state has allocated funding as of September 2019 to upgrade US 29 north of I-785 to the US 158/North Carolina Highway 14 (NC 14) junction in Reidsville to interstate standards, necessary for I-785 to be signed northward to Virginia, however construction is scheduled towards the middle of the decade, after the completion of the urban loop, and is estimated at a cost of $89 million.