Solarcycle, an Oakland, CA-based tech-driven recycling company, raised $30M in funding.
The round, which brought total funding to $37M, was led by Fifth Wall and HG Ventures with participation from Prologis Ventures, as well as existing investors Urban Innovation Fund and Closed Loop Partners.
The company intends to use the funds to accelerate growth and expand operations.
Led by Suvi Sharma, Solarcyrcle is a technology-driven platform designed to maximize solar sustainability by offering solar asset owners a low-cost, eco-friendly, comprehensive process for recycling retiring solar panels and technologies and repurposing them for new uses. Its proprietary technology allows it to extract 95% of a solar panel’s valuable metals, such as silver, silicon, copper and aluminum, and to recycle or repurpose panels currently in use. The company works with residential, commercial and industrial (C&I), and utility companies to recycle solar panels at scale. It is on track to install capacity to recycle one million solar panels per year by the end of 2023, and plans to open a vertically integrated, advanced recycling factory capable of processing millions of panels annually in 2024.
The funding announcement follows a founding year in which Solarcyrcle opened their first, advanced-technology solar recycling facility in Odessa, Texas, and signed customer partnerships with major US solar companies, including Sunrun, Silicon Ranch, DEPCOM Power, SOLV Energy, NovaSource, Greentech Renewables, and Forum Energy Partners.
