Tech
An AI data center boom is fueling Redwood’s energy storage business
A year ago, Redwood Materials didn’t have an energy storage business. Now, it is the fastest-growing unit within the battery recycling and materials startup — a reflection of an AI data center building boom.
The evidence of that growth, the company says, can be found at its R&D lab in San Francisco, which has expanded four-fold into a 55,000-square-foot facility and now employs nearly 100 people. Those are small figures compared to Redwood’s total workforce of 1,200 people and its sprawling campus at its Carson City, Nevada headquarters and another facility near Reno. But its value and recent expansion are tied directly to its burgeoning energy storage that launched in June 2025.
The San Francisco facility, which opened in April 2025, is where engineers integrate the hardware, software, and power electronics for energy storage systems that power data centers, AI computing, and other large-scale industrial applications.
The company said in a blog post Thursday the expansion will support a wave of energy storage deployments related to data centers. The company’s recent $425 million Series E raise will provide the capital needed to scale the business. Google, a new investor, as well as existing backer Nvidia, joined the round to support Redwood’s energy storage business venture.
“AI data centers have definitely been a pressing area of focus,” Claire McConnell, vice president of business development told TechCrunch in a recent interview, who added there are other use cases for its systems including supporting renewable projects like solar and wind.
Data centers have been around for decades, but advancements in AI have spurred a building spree and a need for reliable electricity.
“What data center developers are seeing is something that they hadn’t experienced before,” McConnell said. “When they’re trying to connect to the grid, they are being told it is going to take five-plus years to get that and at the same time, you’re seeing this massive demand to build more data centers and compete in the AI race.”
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Redwood Materials was founded in 2017 by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel to create a circular supply chain for batteries. It initially focused on recycling scrap from battery production and consumer electronics, which was processed and then sold to customers such as Panasonic. The company also expanded into the battery materials business and today produces cathodes for battery cells.
The company opened Redwood Energy last summer to leverage the thousands of EV batteries it has collected as part of its battery-recycling business to provide power to companies. Redwood Energy’s first customer is Crusoe, a startup that, in 2021, Straubel invested in. Redwood set up an energy storage system that uses old EV batteries that are not yet ready for recycling. The system, which generates 12 MW of power and has 63 MWh of capacity, sends power to a modular data center built by Crusoe, a company best known for its large-scale data center campus in Abilene, Texas — the initial site of the Stargate project.
McConnell said customers that are in the pipeline include hyperscalers — companies that operate massive cloud computing data centers and consume hundreds of megawatts of power — that would far exceed the capacity of its project with Crusoe.
“We’re working on ones in the hundreds of megawatt hours, and we have ones in the pipeline that are multiple gigawatt hours,” she said.
Tech
SoftBank to spend an eye-popping $33B to build huge US gas power plant
SoftBank subsidiary SB Energy is expected to build a massive 9.2 gigawatt natural gas-fired power plant on the Ohio-Kentucky border, according to a report from Bloomberg. If completed, it would be the largest power plant in the U.S., capable of powering around 7.5 million homes.
With a price tag of $33 billion, the project would be more expensive than recent natural gas-fired power plants, which have skyrocketed in cost, Bloomberg notes. It’s unclear who will ultimately foot the bill, though traditionally rate-payers have shouldered the burden for new generating capacity.
The Japanese investor is a partner in the Stargate project with OpenAI. SB Energy did not say whether the new power plant would feed directly into the grid or if it would power data centers. OpenAI and SoftBank are in the process of building a “proof of concept” data center at GM’s former Lordstown automotive assembly plant.
A power plant of this size is likely to take years, perhaps a decade, to complete even before taking into account the shortage of natural gas turbines. If completed, the project could emit around 15 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to our calculations based on public, energy-use metrics. When including methane leaks from the natural gas supply chain, the climate impact could be even bigger.
Tech
Reddit is testing a new AI search feature for shopping
Reddit announced on Thursday that it’s testing a new AI search tool that takes community recommendations and matches them with products from some of the company’s shopping and advertising partners.
A small group of users in the U.S. will start to see search results that include interactive product carousels with pricing, images, and direct where-to-buy links.
The announcement reflects Reddit’s broader push to combine its community-driven platform with e-commerce capabilities. The move comes as Reddit launched its first shoppable ad product last year, called Dynamic Product Ads (DPA), which display personalized product recommendations to users based on their interests.
Now, when users who are part of the test search for something like “best noise-canceling headphones” or “electronic gift ideas for a college student,” they will see a carousel of related products at the bottom of the results.
This carousel will feature products directly mentioned by users from conversations on related posts and comments. If users tap on the product, they can view more details and then be directed to the retailer to purchase the item.
“This feature surfaces top-recommended products directly from discussions, giving redditors instant information about any product,” the company wrote in a blog post. “This test is designed to make Reddit easier to navigate while keeping community perspectives at the center of the experience. We’ll continue learning from how people use this new feature and refine the experience over time.”
While platforms like TikTok and Instagram have long integrated shopping features, Reddit is now looking to follow suit. Of course, Reddit isn’t the only tech platform that recently started exploring AI-driven shopping, as OpenAI’s ChatGPT rolled out an “Instant Checkout” feature last September that lets users make Etsy and Shopify purchases within conversations.
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Thursday’s announcement comes after Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said during the company’s earnings release last week that the platform’s AI search engine could be the next big opportunity for its business, not just in terms of product, but also as a revenue driver.
Huffman also noted that weekly active users for search grew 30% over the past year, increasing from 60 million to 80 million, while weekly active users for the AI-powered Reddit Answers feature rose from 1 million in the first quarter of 2025 to 15 million by the fourth quarter.
Tech
As browser wars heat up, Chrome adds new productivity features
As AI companies and startups push their way into the web browser market, the world’s biggest browser, Google Chrome, is rolling out a handful of new features. The company on Thursday announced the official launch of a trio of options, including Split View, PDF annotations, and a Save to Google Drive feature, designed to more deeply integrate Chrome with one of Google’s other online services.
While these particular additions aren’t focused on AI, Google already integrated its Gemini AI assistant into Chrome. The move was made in response to the increased competition from AI providers like OpenAI and Perplexity, which are dabbling in agentic browsers. These so-called browser wars have pushed Google to be less stagnant in terms of developing and releasing more consumer-facing features.
With Split View, multitasking in Chrome has become easier as the feature puts two pages side-by-side in the same tab. This lets you work across two web pages or watch a video while taking notes, among other things. To use the feature, you’ll drag a tab to the left or right edge of the browser window or right-click a link and select “Open Link in Split View.” The tabs will automatically snap into place. When no longer needed, you can exit the Split View layout via an option found via a right-click.

Another practical addition is the PDF annotations feature, which lets you add notes to a PDF or highlight its text from the browser. This means you don’t have to download the PDF and then open it in another application to work with its content. The option, a long time coming, could make it much simpler to do basic PDF tasks, like digitally signing a document, filling out a form, making notes within a file or personal document, and more.

Finally, the new Save to Google Drive feature will allow you to save any PDF directly to your Google Drive account, instead of your computer, where it may get lost. When using this feature, the saved files will appear in a Saved from Chrome folder in your Drive, making them easy to find.

Today’s update follows the expansion of Gemini and other agentic features to Chromebook users last month. And soon, Chrome is poised to adopt another change that was first spearheaded by its competitors: support for vertical tabs. (Tech-savvy users can even enable that option now, in an experimental phase, by changing a flag.)
This reimagined way to organize open tabs was one of the flagship features in The Browser Company’s first alternative browser, Arc, and is now found in its AI browser, Dia. By adding this feature and the others, Google hopes to give Chrome users fewer reasons to switch.
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