Cultured Meat and Future Food Podcast · Alex Shirazi

Aleh Manchuliantsau of Planetarians

·25 min·1 clip

Ale says the biggest challenge is funding while plant-based meat sits in a “deep red zone.”

1. Cultured Meat and Future Food Podcast features Aleh Manchuliantsau of Planetarians, centered on upcycled protein products and the company’s route from chips to protein fries. 2. Alex Jarazzi hosts, and Ale Manchuliantsau matters because he founded Planetarians and describes the company’s technology, funding, and customer channels. 3. The episode asks how Planetarians turns brewery and food-industry by-products into low-cost protein products that can work in schools and food service. 4. Ale says Planetarians makes “better for your protein at the price you love,” and he cites a 72% second-bite rate and pricing below chicken. 5. He says he was born in Belarus, built companies in the post-USSR environment, and relocated to Silicon Valley to build a sustainable technology business. 6. Ale says his earlier companies were in exhibition equipment, smartphone top-ups, spherical solar cells, and a solar company that failed. 7. He names co-founders and contributors including Anastasia at NetCatchover, chef Max Bernhaus, chemical engineer Michael Pastin, and sales lead Sonia Rodriguez. 8. Ale says universities are Planetarians’ anchor customers, with UT Austin first and later University of Alabama, Georgia Southern, and University of Arkansas. 9. He says local distribution through Cisco or US Foods makes the products available to restaurants and food-service organizations. 10. He explains that savory strips use spent yeast as the primary ingredient and spent soybeans as another by-product stream. 11. Ale uses orange peels and oilseed leftovers to argue that industrial food manufacturing already creates unavoidable side streams. 12. He says BCG estimates one-third of crops end up discarded or wasted, mostly as side streams from industrial food manufacturing. 13. Ale says the first product was chips, and he says the company sold over 100,000 servings while learning how much marketing the category needed. 14. He describes a pasta collaboration with Barilla that used sunflower meal and turned extremely dark, like charcoal or squid ink. 15. He says that dark color helped the team understand why meat applications fit the ingredient better than bright snacks or pasta. 16. Ale says the current process combines spent yeast with soy spent soybeans through fermentation-related work that keeps capex low and processing around two minutes. 17. He says the commercial pilot facility in Hayward, near San Francisco, currently produces about 20,000 pounds per month. 18. Ale says the team has two seed rounds of 750,000 and 6 million dollars and is closing a 2 million pre-A round, while Barilla, Techstars, SOSV FoodX, and Ozerbush are named supporters. 19. The tone is practical and founder-led, with Alex Jarazzi asking direct product and business questions and Ale answering in numbers, examples, and technical terms. 20. People interested in upcycled ingredients, institutional food service, and plant-based manufacturing will get the most from it, while listeners wanting a light consumer-food story may skip it.

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