Huade Tan, co-founder and CTO of Plantd, joins me to explain how two former SpaceX engineers ended up building carbon-capturing structural panels out of a North Carolina tobacco field. The conversation covers how Plantd chose its plant feedstock, why the team deliberately passed on the carbon-credit market in favor of a real product business, and what five years of hardware iteration looks like when you're building an industrial press that hasn't been attempted by a US company since the 1960s or '70s. Huade walks through the full process, from cloning a sterile perennial grass to harvesting it with a modified tobacco harvester to pressing it into finished building panels, and shares the numbers behind the business: $40 to $45 million raised from seed through Series B, and a 2024 deal with national homebuilder D.R. Horton to supply 10 million panels for roughly 90,000 homes. What sets this episode apart is how directly Huade connects his engineering background at SpaceX to the problems he's solving now, including a five-step framework for building hardware that the team is still applying today. It's a grounded, technical look at what it takes to build a genuine hardware moat in an industry that hasn't seen real innovation in decades Timestamps: 00:00 Cold open 00:23 Thank you to our sponsors: NC Idea, Ballentine, Bank of America 01:31 Welcome to the episode: introducing Huade Tan and Plantd 01:57 The pitch: two SpaceX engineers, carbon capture, and plywood-like panels 03:34 Huade joins the show 04:01 Huade's background: building life support systems for Crew Dragon at SpaceX 05:27 Education path and Nathan's aerospace background 06:39 Why North Carolina: population growth trends since 2018 07:34 From Crew Dragon's "bubble" to the idea for Plantd 10:14 The founding question: what do you build from captured carbon? 12:23 Why Plantd passed on the carbon credit market 14:14 What didn't work early on 16:03 The market gap: moisture damage in existing building materials 17:15 Simplifying it: how a plant becomes a structural panel 19:00 Finding the right fiber: hemp, wheat straw, bagasse, and more 21:15 The perennial grass: sterile, cloned, and drought-resistant 24:01 400–500 acres established in North Carolina tobacco fields 27:22 Harvesting and the strander: turning stalks into fiber 29:48 Inside the press: resin, heat, and pressure 30:37 Press specs: 15 feet wide, 70 feet long, a quarter-million panels a year 37:09 The 5-step SpaceX engineering framework 39:43 Funding: $40–45 million raised, seed through Series B 41:21 The D.R. Horton partnership and what it taught them 45:04 The 2024 deal: 10 million panels, 90,000 homes, 165,000 tons of CO2 46:04 From hand-made coffee coasters to a real house in Durham 51:36 Why North Carolina: cost, talent, and agricultural infrastructure 53:36 What's next: furniture, biochar, and other verticals 55:00 Where to find Plantd 55:20 Closing and credits ----- Where to Find Huade Tan:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/huadetan/Plantd: https://plantdmaterials.comWhere to Find Scot Wingo: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/ Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/ X: https://x.com/scotwingo --- This episode of Triangle Tweener Talks is hosted by Scot Wingo, presented and produced by NC Tweener Fund, with creative assets and design support from Walk West. We couldn’t share posts like this without our amazing sponsors: Platinum: NC IDEA: https://ncidea.org Gold Sponsors: - Balentine: https://www.balentine.com/triangle-entrepreneurs - EisnerAmpner: https://www.eisneramper.com - Robinson Bradshaw: https://www.robinsonbradshaw.com Silver Sponsors: - Automated Consulting Group: https://automated.co - Bank of America: https://business.bofa.com/en-us/content/technology-industry-group.html ------Triangle Tweener Talks is sponsored by: Atomic Object: https://atomicobject.com/
