Redwood Materials

Redwood Materials was founded by Tesla’s former CTO to focus on e-waste recycling for remanufacturing and reuse. The company uses a proprietary technology to recover elements including cobalt, lithium, nickel, manganese and graphite from old battery cells (from vehicles and consumer electronics), which can be re-used for battery production.

The company announced its first energy storage system recycling project  in November 2023 — dismantling and recycling a 4MWh stationary storage substation in Kauai, Hawaii. In October 2023, Redwood launched an online tool with advanced tracking and management systems for automotive dismantlers to value and sell recovered EV battery packs directly back to the company. 

In September 2023, Redwood Materials acquired Redux Recycling to accelerate Redwood's expansion into Europe.

Key customers and partnerships

The company partnered with Ford in September 2021 to build a closed-loop for battery recycling and create a domestic battery supply chain for EVs in the US. The company partnered with Volkswagen Group (Audi’s parent company) in July 2022 and Lyft in November 2022, to recycle batteries while expanding its presence in the US.

In January 2023, the company partnered with Flite, an Australian electric hydrofoil producer, to recycle end-of-life Flitecell e-foil batteries in the US. In April 2023, the company expanded its partnership with Volkswagen to launch a consumer recycling program for rechargeable devices and lithium-ion batteries. During the same period, the company partnered with e-bike manufacturer Rad Power Bikes to launch an electric bike battery recycling program.

In October 2023, the company partnered with Panasonic to extracting high-purity nickel from end-of-life batteries and supplying it to Panasonic Energy, a subsidiary of Panasonic Holdings, by 2028. This partnership is preceded by the agreement to purchase cathode-active materials and copper foil for EV lithium-ion batteries in November 2022.

In November 2023, the company announced that it would supply cathode materials and copper coils for battery cells produced at Toyota’s North Carolina plant (due to go into production in 2025). This builds on Redwood’s initial partnership with Toyota in June 2022, under which the company would refurbish/recycle batteries from hybrid vehicles.

Funding and financials

In August 2023, Redwood Materials raised more than USD 1 billion in a Series D funding round to expand its capacity, grow the domestic battery supply chain, and enable its customers to purchase battery materials made in the US for the first time. In February 2023, the Department of Energy (DOE) committed a USD 2 billion loan to Redwood Materials to construct and expand its battery recycling facility west of Reno, Nevada.