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

Battery recycling and cathode manufacturing firm Redwood Supplies has raised $350 million because it grows its new power storage enterprise in a bid to energy the AI knowledge heart 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 instructed TechCrunch it was about $6 billion, a billion increased than its previous valuation.

The funds will likely be used to broaden the corporate’s burgeoning power 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 workers for its operations group.

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 client electronics like cellphone batteries and laptop computer computer systems. That enterprise — which continues to develop — includes processing these discarded items and extracting supplies like cobalt, nickel and lithium which might be usually mined. Redwood provides these supplies again to its clients, which embody Panasonic, GM and Toyota.

Redwood has since added new, associated pursuits like cathode manufacturing. Most not too long ago, it launched an energy storage business that makes use of the hundreds of EV batteries it collects to offer energy to corporations. That enterprise, known as Redwood Vitality, is essentially directed in the direction of serving AI knowledge 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 via the recycling course of. The corporate ties these retired EV batteries to renewable power sources like wind and photo voltaic to create an off-grid system that sends energy to AI knowledge facilities or industrial websites. The system might be tied to the grid, and Redwood says the EV batteries can be related to pure fuel generators or future nuclear turbines for large-scale power 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 value of batteries that may very well be used for power storage. By 2028, the corporate plans to deploy 20 gigawatt-hours of grid-scale storage, inserting it on observe to develop into the biggest repurposer of used EV battery packs.