Group 1 - Google has become the latest investor in Redwood Materials, a startup focused on battery recycling and cathode production, as it expands its energy storage business to support AI data centers and other industrial sites [2] - Redwood Materials, founded by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, completed a $350 million Series E funding round led by venture capital firm Eclipse, which has now increased to $425 million with additional investments from Google and others [2] - The post-money valuation of Redwood Materials has exceeded $6 billion, reflecting an increase of over $1 billion from previous valuations, bringing its total private capital raised to $2.3 billion [2] Group 2 - Redwood Materials aims to create a circular supply chain for batteries, initially focusing on recycling battery production waste and consumer electronics batteries, extracting materials like nickel and lithium [3] - The company has expanded its operations beyond recycling to include cathode production and launched an energy storage business that repurposes used electric vehicle batteries into microgrids for AI data centers and large industrial sites [3] - Redwood has recycled over 70% of used or discarded battery packs in North America and currently has a stockpile of over 1 GWh, with plans to deploy 20 GWh of grid-scale storage by 2028 [3][4]