Not too long ago, Ascend Elements was one of the most promising companies in Massachusetts. The Westborough startup was growing fast and focusing on a big problem: how to recycle the lithium-ion batteries inside electric vehicles at the end of their life, extracting materials that could be used to make new batteries.
In 2022, Ascend won a Green Manufacturing Award from the Worcester Business Journal. In 2023, the company’s co-founder, Eric Gratz, was named an EV Industry Power Player by Business Insider. In 2024, the company showed up on Fast Company magazine’s list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies, topping the automotive category.
Along the way, it banked nearly $900 million in capital, making it perhaps the best-funded startup ever to emerge from Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s research labs. And it signed a $1 billion deal with Tesla, the country’s biggest EV producer, to provide recycled battery materials, according to former employees…