R3 Lithium Secures $15M Series A, Starts Georgia Recycling Plant
Fundraise Insider tracks newly funded startups each week and delivers verified sales leads of C-suite contacts straight to your inbox, so you reach the right people while the funding is still fresh. See pricing.
R3 Lithium has raised $15 million in Series A funding and has begun operations at a plant in Covington, Georgia, that will produce lithium carbonate from fully recycled battery materials. The company, which is headquartered at the same Covington site, announced both developments on September 10, 2026.
Investors in the round include Integral GlobalTech Partners, TDK Ventures, and Axial Partners. R3 Lithium acquired the 154,000-square-foot facility in July 2026 and kept the leadership team that first demonstrated commercial-scale recycled lithium production there in 2025. The company also reports roughly $1 billion in signed offtake agreements, including contracts with Trafigura, and is investing to bring the plant to continuous commercial operation.
The new capital will go toward upgrading the existing lithium carbonate line, which the company says was the first in the United States to produce 99 percent purity lithium carbonate from 100 percent recycled content at production scale. R3 Lithium projects the Covington facility will account for more than half of total US lithium carbonate output in 2027.
The process uses calciner-based crystallization and water-based precipitation to pull lithium directly out of recycled black mass at a single site, with no primary mining and no overseas refining. The plant has 30,000 metric tons of shredding capacity and a 2,500-metric-ton lithium carbonate line, with room set aside for a second 2,500-metric-ton line. Shredding lines will turn both manufacturing scrap and end-of-life batteries into black mass. After lithium extraction, the remaining concentrated metal oxide, rich in nickel, cobalt, manganese, and graphite, is sold separately, often at or above the original cost of the feedstock.
The company points to rising demand from defense, electric vehicle makers, consumer electronics, and data center operators. Global battery storage demand grew 51 percent in 2025 to more than 300 gigawatt-hours of installations, and global battery energy storage capacity is projected to grow sixfold between 2025 and 2030. Each gigawatt-hour of grid-scale storage consumes about 880 tons of lithium carbonate.
The United States imports most of its lithium, and 85 to 95 percent of battery cell and component production capacity sits outside US and European borders. New domestic mines can take seven to ten years to permit and more than 20 years from discovery to first production. R3 Lithium’s site, by contrast, works with batteries already in circulation. A previous owner built the facility with roughly $150 million in investment, and R3 acquired it without liabilities.
The growth plan calls for a network of lithium carbonate and black mass shredding facilities across North America and Europe, each built in modular 5,000-metric-ton-per-year units and deployed only when offtake agreements are in place.
CEO Linh Austin has more than 30 years of experience running US and international energy businesses, including senior roles at McDermott International, BP, and ARCO. CTO Eric Gratz, Ph.D., co-founded Ascend Elements, holds 43 patents in battery materials and lithium-ion recycling, and sits on the Technology Committee of the US Department of Energy’s Li-Bridge partnership. R3 Lithium was founded in 2026 and is privately held.
Equipment makers, contractors, and service providers that sell into industrial and energy companies can reach newly funded buyers each week through the B2B Sales Leads List.