The Venture Codex

Led · Seed · Feb 2023

Planetarians develops whole-cut plant-based proteins using upcycled ingredients such as sunflower oil cake and brewer’s yeast. Founded in 2013 by Aleh Manchuliantsau and chef Max Barnthouse, the company pivoted from nutritional drinks to plant-based "vegan meat" and is launching ribs as its first product using only two FDA GRAS ingredients. Its approach captures benefits of solid-state fermentation without building fermentation infrastructure by sourcing brewer’s yeast as a byproduct from AB InBev. Planetarians has verified its technology at industrial scale, tested products with hotels, restaurants and schools, and secured its first commercial contract. The company says its product is priced on par with chicken and claims a carbon footprint 50x better than animal meat and 9x better than other plant-based meats. Planetarians plans to use the new funding to build a pilot facility (as small as 3,000 sq ft), ramp up sales, bring a second production line online in October, and work with AB InBev to place lines across breweries; it estimates $3 million would launch a full line producing up to 15 million pounds per year. The recent financing is a Seed II that raised about $6.7 million in total, including a $6M tranche. PLANETARIANS, based in San Mateo, CA, has developed a one-step technology that sterilizes, destroys anti-nutrients, and functionalizes fiber to upcycle spent sunflower into a high-protein, high-fiber flour. The company says the resulting flour delivers three-times the protein and two-times the fiber of wheat flour at the same cost. Its ingredient can replace about 30% of existing flour in recipes without changing texture or flavor, and PLANETARIANS has been conducting product trials with Barilla’s R&D pilot plant in Italy. It has also worked with Italian CPG Amadori to create flexitarian meatballs and ragù, and has expanded tested applications to snacks, pasta, baked goods, meat products, breakfast items, dips, and purees. The company reported that chips made from its upcycled ingredients posted 69% month-to-month growth on Amazon. PLANETARIANS plans to use the recent funding to continue customer trials and broaden its range of product applications.

Participated · Series B · Jan 2023

Q-CTRL is a leading quantum infrastructure software company that develops and sells software for quantum systems. The company emphasizes that it already builds and sells software products, which it cites as a differentiator in a sector that remains largely research-focused. Q-CTRL has long positioned itself as a player in quantum infrastructure software. It recently secured an $86.3 million Series B extension, bringing the total Series B to $166 million. The company named GP Bullhound as the lead on the extension and noted participation from prior backers and several new investors. The articles frame the funding as growth capital tied to its commercial software activities. Q-CTRL develops quantum control infrastructure and performance-management software that delivers error‑correcting and suppressing techniques for quantum computers and sensors. The company operates a quantum sensing division and offers an edtech platform called Black Opal. Its performance-management software runs natively on IBM quantum computers and Q-CTRL has been an inaugural member of the IBM Quantum Network since 2018. Founded by Michael J. Biercuk in 2017, Q-CTRL lists international headquarters in Sydney, Los Angeles, Berlin, and Oxford. The company has applied its capabilities in logistics and transport with customers including Transport for NSW and the Australian Army. Near-term plans described in the article include delivering quantum-hardware‑optimized algorithmic solvers for train scheduling to UK transport authorities and prototyping solutions with Oxford Quantum Circuits. Q-CTRL builds AI-enhanced quantum infrastructure software that stabilizes quantum hardware and reduces algorithm errors by over 1,000x. The company sells solutions to end-users, researchers, and platform vendors and is deploying performance management software natively on all IBM cloud-connected quantum computers. Q-CTRL is also commercializing "software-ruggedized" quantum sensors, which have been adopted by Australian Defence for GPS-denied navigation. The team entered the year with over $15 million in bookings and closed the first half of 2023 cash-flow positive (ignoring equity investments), while growing to more than 100 staff and adding new offices in the UK and Berlin. Management says it has preserved large cash reserves and plans to use the Series B to fund technical innovation through its quantum research division, expand the product portfolio, and scale operations. Q-CTRL develops quantum-sensing software intended to reduce errors and optimize both hardware and algorithms for quantum computers. Its product suite includes Black Opal, Boulder Opal, Fire Opal and Open Controls; the company launched Black Opal Enterprise in October and released Black Opal for individuals in April 2022. Q-CTRL reported demonstrations achieving up to approximately 9,000 times improvement in the likelihood that a quantum algorithm would give the correct answer. Commercial traction followed those breakthroughs: sales bookings grew threefold to over $15 million in calendar year 2022 and the company has more than 8,000 users. Customers and partners include U.S. government contracts, Australian defense agencies, quantum hardware firms (Rigetti, IonQ, IBM, Atom Computing, Alice & Bob, Nord Quantique, Pasqal), universities, national labs and corporate partners such as EY, KPMG, Capgemini, Quanscient, Xerox PARC and Classiq. Q-CTRL says it will use new funding to continue product engineering, expand sales and marketing capacity, and grow its headcount from about 80 to roughly 120 across Sydney, Los Angeles and Berlin. Q-CTRL builds quantum control infrastructure software that addresses hardware error and instability to improve quantum computing performance. The company is also developing quantum sensing technologies for acceleration, gravity and magnetic fields and working on space‑qualified sensors with a consortium led by Fleet Space Technologies. Clients and partners include Advanced Navigation, the Australian Department of Defense, the Air Force Research Lab and the Australian Space Agency. Recent technical demonstrations using Q-CTRL’s quantum logic gate technology improved quantum algorithm performance on real machines by 2,680%. Q-CTRL has been expanding commercially: revenue in fiscal 2020–2021 was up 3X year‑over‑year and the nascent quantum sensor business generated over $9 million in sales and bookings after launching in late 2020. The company has grown its team from about 20 to 60 since January 2020 and employs more than 30 Ph.D.-level researchers.