Redwood Materials Reportedly Cuts 5% Of Staff After $350m Raise

In Brief

Fresh disconnected a $350 cardinal raise, artillery recycler and cathode-maker Redwood Materials is reportedly cutting astir 5% of its workforce, according to Bloomberg News.

Nevada-based Redwood labor astir 1,200 employees, truthful nan cuts impact a fewer twelve workers.

The company, founded successful 2017 by erstwhile Tesla CTO JB Straubel, initially focused connected recycling scrap from artillery compartment production, user electronics, and utilized EV batteries. The institution extracts materials for illustration cobalt, nickel, and lithium from those discarded equipment and past sells them backmost to its customers, which includes Panasonic. Redwood has since added cathode production.

It precocious launched a caller business that uses those aged EV batteries successful power retention products — a assemblage that has taken disconnected during nan roar of power-hungry AI information centers. As of June, nan institution had stockpiled much than 1 gigawatt-hour worthy of batteries for this purpose.

The $350 cardinal Series E, announced successful October, boosted nan company’s valuation to astir $6 billion, arsenic TechCrunch previously reported. A spokesperson declined to remark connected nan layoffs.

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