Battery recycling company Redwood Materials has secured $350 million in a Series E round, which values the company at $6 billion. It was led by Eclipse Ventures, with participation from Nvidia’s NVentures, to scale its new energy storage business. The funding round strengthens its push to repurpose electric vehicle (EV) batteries to power the world’s expanding AI infrastructure.
Idea born from recycling mission
Founded in 2017 by Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, Redwood Materials started by recycling waste from consumer electronics and EV batteries. By recovering key minerals such as nickel, cobalt, and lithium, Redwood built a closed-loop system that reduces reliance on mining and supports partners like Panasonic, GM, and Toyota.
What began as a recycling mission has evolved into a full-fledged materials production and energy storage business. With this latest capital infusion, Redwood will expand its refining facilities, increase materials output, and recruit additional engineers and operational staff to support growing demand for sustainable energy solutions.
Second life for EV batteries
Redwood’s newest division, Redwood Energy, taps into a valuable yet often overlooked resource, the retired EV batteries that still have years of usable capacity left. Instead of immediately recycling them, the company repurposes these batteries to store and distribute renewable energy.
The systems combine wind, solar, and reused EV batteries to deliver off-grid power to AI data centers and industrial sites, where energy demand has surged due to the computing power required for training large-scale models. These hybrid systems can also integrate with natural gas turbines or future nuclear-powered generators, positioning Redwood as a key player in large-scale, flexible energy storage.
Redwood currently recovers more than 70% of all used or discarded EV battery packs in North America. As of mid-2025, Redwood had amassed over 1 gigawatt-hour of batteries suitable for energy storage and plans to scale that to 20 GWh by 2028.
Final thoughts
With the global race to build energy-hungry AI data centers accelerating, Redwood’s approach offers a sustainable power bridge between transportation electrification and digital infrastructure. Its model not only extends the life of EV batteries but also helps stabilise grids strained by surging AI and industrial energy demands, turning yesterday’s batteries into tomorrow’s power source.
