About this episode
The episode features an interview with JB Straubel discussing Redwood Materials' innovative battery recycling operations and their future projects.
A couple of months ago, we went out to Nevada to hang with JB Straubel, the founder and CEO of Redwood Materials and the co-founder of Tesla. JB took us on a tour of Redwood’s massive battery recycling operations and showed us the company’s next chapter, which centers on building battery and solar farms to power AI data centers. The result of our time with JB is a different style of podcast episode. You’ll probably want to consume this on the Substack, Spotify or YouTube where there’s video, and you can see what’s happening. If you’re not familiar with Redwood, well, it’s up to big things. Around 70 percent of all the lithium-ion batteries that have reached their end of life make their way to Redwood’s facility where they’re then broken down into their base elements, including lithium, cobalt and nickel. Redwood stands as the largest cobalt producer in the United States and does this all from recycling. As in, zero mining. Redwood is now taking car batteries that still have some life left in them and clustering them together alongside solar panels to create giant energy storage systems. Naturally, it’s aiming these systems at the AI set first, offering power that does not depend…
People in this episode
Host: Ashlee Vance
Guest: JB Straubel
Topics covered
- battery recycling
- sustainable energy
- AI data centers
- lithium-ion batteries
- energy storage
- renewable energy
Keywords
- Redwood Materials
- battery recycling
- JB Straubel
- sustainable energy
- AI data centers
- lithium-ion batteries
- energy storage systems
Sponsors
SendCutSend
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Redwood Materials, Tesla, Substack, Spotify, YouTube
Products: lithium-ion batteries, car batteries, solar panels, energy storage systems
Places: Nevada
More episodes of Core Memory
- The Space Race Is So Back — EP 76 Ashlee Vance And Kylie Robison · June 10, 2026 · 1h 23m
- Can You Reverse Decades of Drinking Damage? Perhaps. - EP 75 Jacob Kimmel Is Back · June 2, 2026 · 2h 0m
- The Startup Trying to Save Us From AI Bioweapons- EP 74 Hannu Rajaniemi · May 27, 2026 · 1h 48m
- Schmidt Out of Luck — EP 73 Ashlee Vance And Kylie Robison · May 22, 2026 · 55 min
- The Freshman Who Took Down Stanford's President And Its Perfect Image - EP 72 Theo Baker · May 20, 2026 · 1h 27m
- Meta's AI Chief On AI Beef, New Models And Life With Zuck - EP 71 Alex Wang · May 13, 2026 · 1h 23m
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Core Memory podcast page.