Fresh from $350 million RaiseBattery recycler and cathode-maker Redwood Materials is reportedly cutting about 5% of its workforce, according to Reuters. Bloomberg News,
Nevada-based Redwood has about 1,200 employees, so the cuts will affect a few dozen employees.
Founded in 2017 by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, the company initially focused on battery cell production, consumer electronics and recycling of scrap from used EV batteries. The company extracts materials like cobalt, nickel and lithium from those discarded items and then sells them to its customers, which include Panasonic. Redwood has since added cathode production.
It recently launched a new business that uses those old EV batteries in energy storage products – an area that has taken off during the boom of power-hungry AI data centers. By June, the company had stockpiled more than 1 gigawatt-hour worth of batteries for this purpose.
According to TechCrunch, the $350 million Series E announced in October boosted the company’s valuation to nearly $6 billion. first reportedA spokeswoman declined to comment on the layoffs,
