SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 28, 2026, 07:04 (PST)
- Redwood Materials said it closed a $425 million Series E financing round with Google as a new investor.
- The round expands a $350 million raise announced in October as Redwood pushes deeper into energy storage for data centers.
- Axios reported Google’s investment in the extension at about $75 million.
Redwood Materials said on Wednesday it has closed a $425 million Series E financing round, adding Alphabet’s Google as a new investor in the battery recycler’s push into energy storage. The company did not disclose its valuation, but media reports put it above $6 billion. (Business Insider)
The deal lands as artificial intelligence (AI) data centers drive a new wave of electricity demand and force utilities to look harder at firm power, backup supply and storage. NextEra Energy said this week it was in advanced discussions to supply an additional 9 gigawatts of data centers, a sign of how quickly the pipeline is growing. (Reuters)
Redwood said it will use the new capital to accelerate its energy storage platform while continuing to build out its recycling and critical minerals business. The company has pitched U.S.-made storage as a way to cut reliance on imported LFP (lithium iron phosphate) batteries, and said energy storage is “no longer optional” as power demand surges. (Recycling Today)
Google’s participation was about $75 million as part of a Series E extension, Axios reported. A Series E is a late-stage venture funding round, typically used to scale operations rather than prove the basic product. (Axios)
The company had announced a $350 million close in October led by Eclipse, with Nvidia’s venture arm, NVentures, also coming in, TechCrunch reported. Redwood said it recovers more than 70% of used or discarded battery packs in North America and is turning some of them into microgrids for data centers under a unit called Redwood Energy. The company said it expects to deploy 20 gigawatt-hours (GWh, a measure of energy capacity) of grid-scale storage by 2028. (TechCrunch)
Redwood was founded in 2017 to recycle lithium-ion batteries and recover metals such as lithium, cobalt and nickel, and has expanded into energy storage systems that can support the grid and power data centers. It has partnerships with companies including Volkswagen, Panasonic, Toyota and Lyft, Reuters reported previously. (Reuters)
Latitude Media said Redwood is selling fixed-capacity storage, swapping out degraded packs to keep output steady, and using software to stitch together batteries from different vehicles into a single system. CTO Colin Campbell called the energy unit a “detour,” saying, “We don’t have to choose” between storage and recycling. The outlet said the company still relies mainly on manufacturing scrap for recycling feedstock and has faced delays and layoffs as it tries to scale up. (Latitude Media)
The data center storage market is already crowded, with Tesla among the best-known suppliers of large battery systems. Tesla deployed 14.2 GWh of energy-storage products in the latest quarter, and Baird analyst Ben Kallo told MarketWatch the segment would likely be the company’s “highlight” when it reports earnings. (MarketWatch)
But turning used EV packs into reliable, bankable data-center power is still a bet. Supplies of suitable second-life batteries, safety testing, and the cost curve for new batteries can all swing the economics — and customers won’t wait around if projects are slow to site, permit or connect.
