A battery recycling company that processed $1.1 billion has filed for bankruptcy.

Ascend Elements, one of the largest lithium battery recycling companies in the United States, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on April 9. Liabilities exceed $192 million.
Founded in 2015, with more than $1.1 billion in funding (equity + government grants), it has a plant in Georgia that specializes in dismantling old batteries and reprocessing them into cathode materials.
Because
The Trump administration canceled a $316 million government grant. This funding was originally earmarked to build a new factory in Kentucky; $204 million had already been allocated, and the remaining $112 million was cut.
The U.S. electric vehicle market is slowing down. Battery material prices are falling, and lithium prices have dropped by more than 70% from their peak. The economic model for recycled batteries was built on the assumption that material prices would stay high—once that assumption broke, the model collapsed.
The fragility of policy-dependent companies: canceling a single grant can send a company with billion-level financing into bankruptcy. If a business model needs government subsidies to operate, it isn’t a real business model.
The cleanup of the new energy sector is accelerating.
With lithium prices collapsing + the retreat of subsidies + EV growth slowing, under these triple pressures, players that lack sufficient cash flow will be eliminated in batches.