Tesla cofounder JB Straubel served as the brains behind the battery development for the electric vehicle giant, and he saw firsthand the massive amounts of critical minerals that are potentially wasted when it comes time to retire each EV—raw materials ripe for recycling and redeploying.
China dominates most of the world’s critical mineral supply chains. Each EV battery represents a treasure trove of lithium, cobalt, copper, nickel, and more that can be reused for brand-new batteries for energy storage and all sorts of devices from AI data centers to military equipment to smartphones and computers. There are 60 natural elements deemed “critical minerals” by the U.S. government, and America only produces a small minority of them.
Straubel founded Redwood Materials in 2017, which is rapidly expanding and has grown into the United States’ first line of defense for recycling critical minerals in the potential supply-chain cold war with China—now at a temporary truce.
“Being able to tap into materials that are already in the market can dramatically reduce the pressure on what’s needed to mine,” Straubel told Fortune. “Once you have some diversity of supply, you reduce the risk of the [Chinese] monopoly and the geopolitical concentration.”
