Redwood Materials raises another $350M to power up its energy storage business

Battery recycling and cathode accumulation institution Redwood Materials has raised $350 cardinal arsenic it grows its caller vigor retention concern successful a bid to powerfulness the AI information halfway boom.

The Series E round, led by task steadfast Eclipse, besides included a caller strategical concern by Nvidia’s task superior arm, NVentures. The company’s valuation was not disclosed, but a root acquainted with the circular told TechCrunch it was astir $6 billion, a cardinal higher than its erstwhile valuation.

The funds volition beryllium utilized to grow the company’s burgeoning vigor retention concern arsenic good arsenic its refining and materials accumulation capacity. Redwood, founded by erstwhile Tesla CTO JB Straubel, besides plans to prosecute much engineers and unit for its operations team.

When Redwood Materials was founded successful 2017, it acceptable retired to make a circular proviso concatenation for batteries by focusing connected recycling scrap from artillery compartment accumulation and user electronics similar compartment telephone batteries and laptop computers. That concern — which continues to turn — involves processing those discarded goods and extracting materials similar cobalt, nickel and lithium that are typically mined. Redwood supplies those materials backmost to its customers, which see Panasonic, GM and Toyota.

Redwood has since added new, related pursuits similar cathode production. Most recently, it launched an vigor retention business that uses the thousands of EV batteries it collects to supply powerfulness to companies. That business, called Redwood Energy, is mostly directed towards serving AI information centers arsenic good arsenic different large-scale concern sites.

Redwood is sitting connected monolithic quantities of EV batteries that person excessively overmuch beingness near to enactment done the recycling process. The institution ties these retired EV batteries to renewable vigor sources similar upwind and star to make an off-grid strategy that sends powerfulness to AI information centers oregon concern sites. The strategy tin beryllium tied to the grid, and Redwood says the EV batteries tin besides beryllium connected to earthy state turbines oregon aboriginal atomic generators for large-scale vigor storage.

It has plentifulness of supply. The institution recovers much than 70% of each utilized oregon discarded artillery packs successful North America, and not each are recycled close away. As of June, Redwood had stockpiled much than 1 gigawatt-hour worthy of batteries that could beryllium utilized for vigor storage. By 2028, the institution plans to deploy 20 gigawatt-hours of grid-scale storage, placing it connected way to go the largest repurposer of utilized EV artillery packs.