SPARKS, Nev., June 26, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Crusoe, the industry’s first vertically integrated AI infrastructure provider, and Redwood, the leading battery recycling and materials company, today unveiled North America’s largest microgrid powered by large-scale solar and second-life EV batteries, designed to support AI factories with unparalleled flexibility and speed. This strategic partnership delivers rapidly deployable, mobile and scalable AI data centers that operate efficiently off-grid. Together, Crusoe and Redwood are delivering a compelling solution to one of AI’s biggest challenges: power.
Redwood is uniquely positioned to bring this solution to market, at scale. Redwood currently processes 20 GWh of batteries annually —the equivalent of 250,000 EVs—representing about 90% of all lithium-ion batteries in North America. Many of these battery packs can be repurposed into second-life energy storage, extending their useful life before recycling and unlocking value at every stage.
“Redwood Energy’s technology allows us to repurpose depreciated but functional EV battery packs, before recycling, into stationary storage. By putting these systems to work in high-demand applications like AI, we’re building energy infrastructure that’s faster, cleaner and at lower cost,” said JB Straubel, founder and CEO of Redwood Materials. “By pairing repurposed batteries with Crusoe’s modular data-center platform, we can stand up dependable power wherever new compute is needed, without waiting years for new grid capacity.”
Redwood has already built a 12 MW and 63 MWh capacity microgrid, which is the largest second-life battery deployment in the world and the largest microgrid in North America. It’s powering Crusoe’s modular data center for AI infrastructure. Redwood Energy—Redwood’s new business line offers a lower-cost solution: repurposing used battery packs—with most of their capacity remaining—into modular energy storage systems that bridge today’s infrastructure gaps with speed and scale.
Crusoe is introducing Crusoe Spark™, a new turnkey, modular AI data center solution, powered by Redwood’s power technology at this deployment. Crusoe Spark integrates all necessary infrastructure—including power, cooling, and GPU-ready racks—into a single, portable unit optimized for accelerated AI compute. Engineered for rapid and scalable deployments, these flexible, compact, self-contained units are ideal for a range of applications, including delivering low-latency AI inference services at the edge without the site constraints of larger-scale AI infrastructure. Manufactured in America by Crusoe, Crusoe Spark enables businesses across industries to easily and rapidly scale their data center capacity and AI computing workloads.
“One of the greatest challenges of our time is rapidly scaling the energy needed to support AI. By leveraging Redwood’s revolutionary recycled battery systems with a solar array to power Crusoe Spark units, we’ve demonstrated how you can quickly deploy the energy and data center needs required to meet the demand of AI in a cost-effective and sustainably powered way,” said Chase Lochmiller, CEO and co-founder of Crusoe. “This is the first of many such deployments, and a prime example of Crusoe’s energy-first approach to AI infrastructure from the ground up.”
Crusoe’s leadership in AI infrastructure is built upon its deep experience building some of the world’s largest data center campuses, including its 1.2-gigawatt site in Abilene, Texas as well as scalable modular data centers for advanced computing in remote oil fields. The company is now using its expertise in data center development and energy infrastructure to offer a new solution through Crusoe Spark that solves a different but equally critical challenge: deploying powerful, low-latency AI compute at the network’s edge. By solving the complexities of power and infrastructure in a compact modular system, Crusoe continues to find new ways to enable customers to flexibly scale and deploy AI capabilities unconstrained by traditional data center infrastructure.
About Redwood Materials
Redwood Materials was founded in 2017 to build a supply chain for electric vehicles and clean energy products, making them more sustainable and driving down the cost for batteries. We’re doing this by developing and deploying new technologies to increase the scope and scale of recycled and sustainable materials in the global battery supply chain. Through Redwood Energy, we also repurpose battery packs into low-cost, high-capacity energy storage to meet growing power demands.
About Crusoe
Crusoe is on a mission to align the future of computing with the future of the climate. Crusoe provides a reliable, scalable, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly solution for AI infrastructure by harnessing large-scale clean energy, building AI-optimized data centers, and empowering builders to reach their AI potential. Crusoe is empowering the AI revolution.
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