Redwood Supplies raises one other $350M to energy up its vitality storage enterprise

Battery recycling and cathode manufacturing firm Redwood Supplies has raised $350 million because it grows its new vitality storage enterprise in a bid to energy the AI information middle growth.

The Collection E spherical, led by enterprise agency Eclipse, additionally included a brand new strategic funding by Nvidia’s enterprise capital arm, NVentures. The corporate’s valuation was not disclosed, however a supply accustomed to the spherical informed TechCrunch it was about $6 billion, a billion increased than its earlier valuation.

The funds can be used to develop the corporate’s burgeoning vitality storage enterprise in addition to its refining and supplies manufacturing capability. Redwood, based by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, additionally plans to rent extra engineers and employees for its operations workforce.

When Redwood Materials was based in 2017, it got down to create a round provide chain for batteries by specializing in recycling scrap from battery cell manufacturing and shopper electronics like cellphone batteries and laptop computer computer systems. That enterprise — which continues to develop — entails processing these discarded items and extracting supplies like cobalt, nickel and lithium which might be sometimes mined. Redwood provides these supplies again to its prospects, which embody Panasonic, GM and Toyota.

Redwood has since added new, associated pursuits like cathode manufacturing. Most just lately, it launched an vitality storage enterprise that makes use of the hundreds of EV batteries it collects to offer energy to firms. That enterprise, known as Redwood Vitality, is basically directed in the direction of serving AI information facilities in addition to different large-scale industrial websites.

Redwood is sitting on large portions of EV batteries which have an excessive amount of life left to place by means of the recycling course of. The corporate ties these retired EV batteries to renewable vitality sources like wind and photo voltaic to create an off-grid system that sends energy to AI information facilities or industrial websites. The system could be tied to the grid, and Redwood says the EV batteries may also be related to pure gasoline generators or future nuclear turbines for large-scale vitality storage.

It has loads of provide. The corporate recovers greater than 70% of all used or discarded battery packs in North America, and never all are recycled instantly. As of June, Redwood had stockpiled greater than 1 gigawatt-hour price of batteries that may very well be used for vitality storage. By 2028, the corporate plans to deploy 20 gigawatt-hours of grid-scale storage, putting it on monitor to grow to be the most important repurposer of used EV battery packs.