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Redwood Materials has been on an expansion tear in late years — growth that has extended the lithium - ion barrage fire recycling and materials startup ’s footmark well beyond its Carson City , Nevada home office as it interlock up deals withToyota , Panasonic , and GM , started construction on aSouth Carolina factory , andmade an acquisitionin Europe .
And yet , Redwood Materials CTO Colin Campbell hear a spread in the companionship ’s 1,100 - person workforce . San Francisco was the response , Campbell told TechCrunch , a longtime Tesla veteran who take up the top technical school smear in August 2023 .
The company , which was founded by formerTesla CTO JB Straubel , is filling that gap with a fresh research and development center in San Francisco . The 15,000 - square - pes facility located in the city ’s Design District is outfit with research laboratory space to support engineers who will finally work on every point of the battery ecosystem , from chemical engine room and cathode skill to software package and electrical engineering . That work could help improve cathode product , an important component of Redwood ’s business . The company sire $ 200 million in revenue in 2024 .
The heart , which Redwood prompt into about a hebdomad ago , only has a fistful of technologist on site . But Campbell expects it will eventually employ about 50 or more people . “We had a really unspoiled year , and we had great gross , ” Campbell said , tote up that the ship’s company has been set by its power to expand . “ And what ’s limiting our power to expand the engineering team is engage . We just demand to blow up the aperture of where we can hire from . And San Francisco was sort of a lucid place for a bunch of different reason . ”High on the leaning is recondite endowment puddle of hardware and software engineers who are in the Bay Area , he add together .
Lithium - ion batteries hold three critical edifice blocks . There are two electrode , an anode ( negative ) on one side and a cathode ( positive ) on the other . Typically , an electrolyte sit in the midriff and acts as the messenger to move ion between the electrode when charge and dispatch . Cathode foils , which calculate for more than half the price of a battery cell , turn back lithium , atomic number 28 , and Co . Redwood is able to capture all of those materials through its battery recycling and processing .
But Redwood aims to do more than recycle . The startup , which has raised more than $ 2 billion in secret funds , is building an end - to - end electric battery ecosystem that touches the full life cycle of lithium - ion battery at every stage , including recycling , refining , and remanufacturing as well as evaluate the health and extending the life of the battery .
Campbell is particularly peachy for engineers to act upon on equipment development for Redwood ’s factories .
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“ A major part of why they ( factory ) are intemperate to build in the U.S. is that the U.S. does n’t have the industrial al-Qa’ida to make a bunch of this machinery , and in particular , to make novel and toll - in effect machinery , ” he say . “ So new process equipment engineering is a big piece of it . ”
Engineers at the science laboratory will also work on assault and battery symptomatic method to help understand the wellness of a shelling multitude , which Campbell believes could benefit another piece of the clientele . “I think it ’s crucial to start with the foundation of the byplay , which is battery materials , and we rest all of these other projects on top of them , ” Campbell said , adding the diagnostic tools could boost the bottom line . “ So if we ’re have packs , and we name it , and it actually is bad , that ’s a majuscule reward to us to just recycle it directly — I think it could be significant . ”
Campbell added that he did n’t think diagnosis would be a majority stage business for Redwood , but that it fits into the company ’s overall ethos .
“ We have this constitutional distaste for retiring thing before they take to be retired , ” he pronounce . “ So even if it ’s not a major part of the stage business , it ’s the right thing to do for this ecosystem . “ And we would , we would do it anyway . ”
