Redwood Materials has been on an growth tear in recent times — progress that has prolonged the lithium-ion battery recycling and supplies startup’s footprint nicely past its Carson City, Nevada headquarters because it locked up offers with Toyota, Panasonic, and GM, began building on a South Carolina manufacturing unit, and made an acquisition in Europe.
And but, Redwood Materials CTO Colin Campbell noticed a spot within the firm’s 1,100-person workforce. San Francisco was the reply, Campbell advised TechCrunch, a longtime Tesla veteran who took the highest tech spot in August 2023.
The firm, which was based by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, is filling that hole with a brand new analysis and growth heart in San Francisco. The 15,000-square-foot facility positioned within the metropolis’s Design District is supplied with lab house to assist engineers who will finally work on each level of the battery ecosystem, from chemical engineering and cathode science to software program and electrical engineering. That work may assist enhance cathode manufacturing, an essential part of Redwood’s enterprise. The firm generated $200 million in income in 2024.
The heart, which Redwood moved into a few week in the past, solely has a handful of engineers on website. But Campbell expects it can finally make use of about 50 or extra individuals.
“We had a extremely good yr, and we had nice income,” Campbell stated, including that the corporate has been restricted by its capability to broaden. “And what’s limiting our capability to broaden the engineering group is hiring. We simply have to broaden the aperture of the place we are able to rent from. And San Francisco was form of a logical place for a bunch of various causes.”
High on the record is deep expertise pool of {hardware} and software program engineers who’re within the Bay Area, he added.
Lithium-ion batteries comprise three crucial constructing blocks. There are two electrodes, an anode (adverse) on one aspect and a cathode (constructive) on the opposite. Typically, an electrolyte sits within the center and acts because the courier to maneuver ions between the electrodes when charging and discharging. Cathode foils, which account for greater than half the price of a battery cell, comprise lithium, nickel, and cobalt. Redwood is ready to seize all of these supplies via its battery recycling and processing.
But Redwood goals to do greater than recycle. The startup, which has raised greater than $2 billion in personal funds, is constructing an end-to-end battery ecosystem that touches the total life cycle of lithium-ion batteries at each stage, together with recycling, refining, and remanufacturing in addition to assessing the well being and increasing the lifetime of the battery.
Campbell is especially eager for engineers to work on gear growth for Redwood’s factories.
“A serious a part of why they (factories) are arduous to construct within the U.S. is that the U.S. doesn’t have the economic base to make a bunch of this equipment, and specifically, to make novel and cost-effective equipment,” he stated. “So novel course of gear engineering is a giant piece of it.”
Engineers on the lab will even work on battery diagnostic strategies to assist perceive the well being of a battery pack, which Campbell believes may benefit one other piece of the enterprise.
“I feel it’s essential to begin with the muse of the enterprise, which is battery supplies, and we relaxation all of those different initiatives on high of them,” Campbell stated, including the diagnostic instruments may increase the underside line. “So if we’re receiving packs, and we diagnose it, and it truly is unhealthy, that’s an excellent benefit to us to simply recycle it instantly — I feel it might be important.”
Campbell added that he didn’t suppose prognosis could be a majority enterprise for Redwood, however that it matches into the corporate’s total ethos.
“We have this constitutional distaste for retiring issues earlier than they have to be retired,” he stated. “So even when it’s not a serious a part of the enterprise, it’s the proper factor to do for this ecosystem. “And we might, we might do it anyway.”
