Tesla Co-Founder Straubel’s Battery Firm Redwood Cuts Dozens
Reductions Were Equal to About 5% to 6% of Workforce and Spread Over Company
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Tesla Inc. co-founder JB Straubel’s battery recycling firm,Redwood Materials, cut dozens of jobs as the startup scales back some of its ambitious projects to refocus on tapping into demand for grid-scale batteries.
The staffing reductions occurred this month and were spread across the company, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the information is private.
The cuts were equal to about5% to 6% of the company’s workforce and included employees in cathode material engineering. The job reductions reflected a shift of resources to critical minerals and energy storage, according to one of the people.
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Redwood declined to comment.
Redwood is now focusing on repurposing old packs for the grid and extracting critical minerals to be sold to refiners to turn into battery material or metal alloys.
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The closely held company led by Straubel was founded in 2017 to create what he called a“closed-loop”supply chain for the products in the U.S. The business model has included collecting end-of-life cells for reuse and repurposing them to make battery materials.
But with EV sales failing to meet expectations, there’s been a shakeout among U.S. battery recycling companies that’s increased competition for limited battery feedstock. China’s grip on the supply chain has also lowered commodity prices and eroded profit margins. The industry is facing additional challenges from the Trump administration, which has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to other battery recyclers and eliminated incentives for EVs.
A brighter outlook for stationary storage batteries to support data centers and the grid has helped bolster demand for the industry amid a slowdown for electric vehicle sales.
Meanwhile, Redwood’s commercial cathode production facility in Sparks, Nev., was originally intended toopen in 2024and produce cathode active material, but it still stands incomplete and has no announced opening date. Cathodes are a critical component in lithium-ion batteries, and most of today’s cathode material is made almost entirely in Asia.
Last month, Redwood announced it hadraised $350 millionin a Series E financing round that valued the company at more than $6 billion. Earlier this month, it began operations at a $3.5 billion factory in South Carolina that will supply critical minerals.
That plant, combined with operations in Nevada, makes Redwood the only major domestic source of cobalt, and it produces as much nickel and lithium as the largest mines in the U.S., according to the company.
Written by Michelle Ma, Gabrielle Coppola and Ben Elgin with assistance fromEd Ludlow
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