NC Tweener Talks

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

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Where to Find Huade Tan:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/huadetan/
Plantd: https://plantdmaterials.com

Where to Find Scot Wingo:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/
Tweener Times: https://www.tweenertimes.com/
X: https://x.com/scotwingo

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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 

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