Battery recycler Redwood just fired 100 people to chase the next hype
About 100 people just got deleted from Redwood Materials’ org chart because the vibes shifted.
Redwood — yes, the battery recycling golden child founded by former Tesla CFO JB Straubel — laid off roughly 10% of its staff. Not because recycling stopped being “the future,” but because the spreadsheet gods demanded a blood sacrifice.
They’re calling it a “restructuring” so they can “pivot toward energy storage.”
Translation
recycling is harder, slower, and less immediately profitable than the pitch deck promised, so they’re scooting their chips to whatever makes investors clap right now.
Energy storage is basically the EV boom’s older sibling that owns a duplex and has a Costco membership. Less sexy than car hype, more useful when the grid is wheezing and everyone’s pretending we can electrify civilization on hopes and branded water bottles.
The Number
10% — that’s the slice of the workforce that just found out “mission-driven” companies still do layoffs like it’s a Silicon Valley holiday tradition.
And let’s be clear: this isn’t some moral failure by the people who got cut. This is what happens when an industry is built on press releases, subsidies, and the idea that reality will politely wait outside while founders speedrun “disruption.”
Meanwhile the rest of us are supposed to believe the green transition is inevitable, smooth, and painless — like we’re all just going to hold hands and compost our way through capitalism.
If you work in anything even vaguely climate/EV-adjacent, this is your reminder that the company’s “planet-saving” slogan is printed on the same paper as the layoff paperwork.
The Bottom Line
The clean-energy future is real, but your job security still depends on whether a VC thinks “storage” sounds hotter than “recycling” this quarter.
TLDR
Redwood Materials axed ~100 people (10%) and called it a “pivot” to energy storage, aka recycling didn’t print money fast enough for the investor group chat.
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