Redwood Supplies has been on an growth tear in recent times — development that has prolonged the lithium-ion battery recycling and supplies startup’s footprint effectively past its Carson Metropolis, 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 Supplies CTO Colin Campbell noticed a niche within the firm’s 1,100-person workforce. San Francisco was the reply, Campbell instructed TechCrunch, a longtime Tesla veteran who took the highest tech spot in August 2023.
The corporate, which was based by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, is filling that hole with a brand new analysis and growth middle in San Francisco. The 15,000-square-foot facility positioned within the metropolis’s Design District is supplied with lab house to help engineers who will ultimately work on each level of the battery ecosystem from chemical engineering and cathode science to software program and electrical engineering. That work might assist enhance cathode manufacturing, an vital element of Redwood’s enterprise, which generated $200 million in income in 2024.
The middle, which Redwood moved into a few week in the past, solely has a handful of engineers on website. However Campbell expects it would ultimately make use of about 50 or extra folks.
“We had a extremely good yr, and we had nice income,” Campbell mentioned, including that the corporate has been restricted by its means to develop. “And what’s limiting our means to develop the engineering workforce is hiring. We simply have to develop the aperture of the place we will rent from. And San Francisco was kind of to a logical place for a bunch of various causes.”
Excessive on the checklist is deep expertise pool of {hardware} and software program engineers who’re within the Bay Space, he added.
Lithium-ion batteries comprise three essential constructing blocks. There are two electrodes, an anode (detrimental) on one aspect and a cathode (optimistic) on the opposite. Sometimes, 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 by way of its battery recycling and processing.
However Redwood goals to do greater than recycle. The startup, which has raised greater than $2 billion in non-public 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, remanufacturing in addition to assessing the well being and lengthening the lifetime of the battery.
Campbell is especially eager for engineers to work on tools growth for Redwood’s factories.
“A significant a part of why they’re (factories) are onerous 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 price efficient equipment,” he mentioned. “So novel course of tools engineering is a chunk massive piece of it.”
Engineers on the lab can even work on battery diagnostic strategies that 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 vital to start out with the inspiration of the enterprise, which is battery supplies, and we relaxation all of those different tasks on prime of them,” Campbell mentioned including the diagnostic instruments might increase the underside line. “So if we’re receiving packs, and we diagnose it, and it truly is unhealthy, that’s an ideal benefit to us to simply recycle it instantly — I feel it might be important.”
Campbell added that he didn’t suppose analysis could be majority enterprise for Redwood, however that it suits into the corporate’s total ethos.
“We have now this constitutional distaste for retiring issues earlier than they should be retired,” he mentioned “So even when it’s not a significant a part of the enterprise, it’s the suitable factor to do for this ecosystem. “And we might, we’d do it anyway.”