Redwood Materials, a battery recycling startup founded by JB Straubel, a co-founder of Tesla, has successfully raised over $1 billion in a recent Series D funding round. The funding round was co-led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund, with participation from T. Rowe Price Associates and several new investors, including OMERS, Caterpillar Venture Capital, Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund, and Deepwater Asset Management.
Redwood Materials has a unique focus on recycling and repurposing materials from used batteries, contributing to a more sustainable and circular approach to battery production. The startup aims to create a closed-loop supply chain for battery materials, reducing reliance on mining and processing new resources, particularly in regions like China.
The company plans to utilize the funds to further expand its operations and increase its capacity to recycle and refine battery materials. One of the key goals is to establish a domestic battery supply chain in the US, allowing customers to source battery materials, such as lithium, nickel, and cobalt, from within the country. This approach seeks to minimize the carbon footprint associated with transporting materials across long distances and to increase the overall sustainability of battery production.
Redwood Materials is building two facilities in the US: a recycling plant in Carson City, Nevada, which will produce anode copper foil, and a larger facility in Charleston, South Carolina. The latter facility is designed not only for recycling batteries but also for remanufacturing cathode and anode copper foil. By repurposing materials from used batteries and refining them into new components, Redwood aims to create a more efficient and environmentally friendly process for producing battery materials.
With the additional funding, the company plans to accelerate its development timeline. Redwood Materials aims to reach a capacity of around 100 gigawatt-hours (GWh) per year of cathode active materials and anode foil by 2025. This would be enough to power approximately 1 million electric vehicles. Looking ahead to 2030, the company envisions scaling up its production output to 500 GWh per year, which could potentially power around 5 million electric vehicles annually.
Redwood Materials’ efforts align with the broader shift toward sustainable and responsible practices in the electric vehicle and battery industries. As the demand for electric vehicles continues to rise, finding innovative solutions for recycling and repurposing battery materials will be crucial in minimizing the environmental impact of these technologies.