Redwood Materials scores a new $2 billion loan to build out battery recycling facility in Nevada
JB Straubel sits down with CNBC’s Phil LeBeau at Redwood Materials.
Redwood Materials has attained a $2 billion loan commitment from the Department of Energy, the agency announced on Thursday via its loan programs office.
The battery-recycling startup will use the funding to build and expand its battery recycling facility outside of Reno, Nevada. The facility takes end-of-life electric vehicle batteries and automotive production scrap, processes these, and churns out raw materials and products that are used to make new EV battery cells, namely anode copper foil and cathode-active materials.
Redwood Materials was founded by former Tesla CTO and cofounder JB Straubel in 2017 during his tenure at Elon Musk’s car company.
Straubel left Tesla to run Redwood Materials full-time in 2019, and several former Tesla employees have joined him there including COO Kevin Kassekert, who previously worked as a vice president of people and places at Tesla.
As CNBC previously reported, last year Redwood Materials struck a multi-billion dollar deal with Tesla supplier Panasonic.
“These are very capital-intensive projects, and we’re in a competition with Asia to ramp this up and to bring these supply chains and manufacturing operations back to the US,” said Straubel on CNBC’s The Exchange on Thursday.
He added, “The US battery demand and EV demand is growing…but we have a long way before that supply chain is predominantly moved to the US.”
The Director of the DOE’s Loan Programs Office, Jigar Shah, wrote in a post about the new loan commitment:
“In order to meet the needs of the rapidly growing EV market, the United States will need to expand battery recycling capabilities, as well as grow our domestic capacity for producing battery precursor materials. By lowering the cost of the critical materials for lithium-ion batteries using recycled materials, electric vehicles can become more accessible to lower income communities.”
With the aim of lowering greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade, President Joe Biden pushed for and signed the $430 billion U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August 2022. The DOE’s new loan to Redwood Materials comes in part from that law, which has so far resulted in more than 100,000 new green jobs being announced.
The DOE says it appropriated $55 billion in new estimated loan authority for its Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program through the IRA. This same program once helped Tesla get its start — and Tesla repaid their loan early and grew into a juggernaut, in sharp contrast with cleantech companies that fizzled like Solyndra, for example.
Redwood Materials has a pilot line up and running for production of anode copper foil in Nevada already. It is aiming to support the production of more than 1 million EVs per year, the DOE said in its post, which could help drivers avoid an estimated 3.5 million tons of CO2 and other tailpipe emissions, annually.
While Tesla may have been the birthplace of Redwood Materials, and a partner of the company today, it could compete with the recyclers on technology eventually. In its 2022 annual financial filing with the SEC, Tesla said, “We have agreements with third party battery recycling companies to recycle our battery packs and we are also piloting our own recycling technology.”
Omada Health virtual health program.
Courtesy: Omada Health
Omada Health priced its IPO at $19 per share on Thursday, in the middle of the expected range.
The virtual chronic care company said in a press release that 7.9 million shares are being sold in the offering, amounting to $150 million.
Omada, founded in 2012, will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “OMDA.” The company filed its initial prospectus in May and updated the document with an expected pricing range of $18 to $20 per share.
At the IPO price, Omada is worth about $1.1 billion, though that number could be higher on a fully diluted basis. That’s right around its private market valuation from 2022, when Omada announced a $192 million funding round that pushed its valuation above $1 billion.
U.S. Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Fidelity’s FMR LLC are the largest outside shareholders in the company, each owning between 9% and 10% of the stock.
Omada offers virtual care programs to support patients with chronic conditions like prediabetes, diabetes and hypertension. Sean Duffy, Omada’s CEO, co-founded the company with Andrew DiMichele and Adrian James, who have both moved on to other ventures.
It’s the second digital health IPO in a matter of weeks following an extended drought for the industry. Digital physical therapy startup Hinge Health debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in May.
The tech IPO market has been showing signs of life, with Hinge being one of the latest offerings. On Thursday, shares of crypto company Circle Internet soared 168% in their New York Stock Exchange debut. Fintech company eToro started trading last month, and Chime Financial, which offers online banking services, is set to hit the market next week.
Omada’s revenue increased 57% in its first quarter to $55 million from $35.1 million a year earlier, according to its prospectus. For 2024, revenue rose 38% to $169.8 million from $122.8 million the previous year.
The company’s net loss narrowed to $9.4 million in the first quarter from $19 million a year ago.
WATCH: Venture Capitalist Bradley Tusk talks what is coming down the IPO pipeline
Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella speaks during the Microsoft Build 2025, conference in Seattle, Washington, on May 19, 2025.
Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images
On a down day for the market, Microsoft reached a record high for the first time in 11 months.
Shares of the software giant rose 0.8% to close at $467.68. Microsoft has once again reclaimed the title of world’s largest company by market cap, with a valuation of $3.48 trillion. Nvidia has a market cap of $3.42 trillion, and Apple is valued at $3 trillion.
Microsoft last recorded a record close in July 2024. The stock is now up 11% for the year, while the Nasdaq is flat.
Tech stocks broadly dropped on Thursday, led by a plunge in Tesla, as CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump escalated their public beef. Musk, who was leading the Trump Administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) until last week, has slammed the Trump-backed spending bill making its way through Congress, a spat that has turned personal.
But Microsoft investors appear to be tuning out that noise.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella focused on his company’s tight relationship with artificial intelligence startup OpenAI in an interview with Bloomberg, some portions of which were published on Thursday.
“Why would any one of us want to go upset that?” he told Bloomberg. Nadella told analysts in January that OpenAI had made a large new commitment with Microsoft’s Azure cloud. In total, Microsoft has invested nearly $14 billion in OpenAI.
WATCH: Trade Tracker: Jim Lebenthal buys more Cisco and Qualcomm and trims Microsoft
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