Top Stories — Wednesday, April 22, 2026
What is trending in the USA today? Here is Breaking News:
- Redwood Materials lays off 10% in restructuring to chase energy storage business — TechCrunch
- Polymarket launches trading of heavily leveraged 'perps' contracts — CNBC
- Judge dismisses Kash Patel's defamation lawsuit over claim he frequented 'nightclubs' — CNBC
Redwood Materials lays off 10% in restructuring to chase energy storage business
Source: TechCrunch • Published: 4/22/2026, 6:07:33 AM
Redwood Materials has laid off around 135 employees, or roughly 10% of its workforce, as it restructures to better accommodate its growing energy storage business, TechCrunch has learned.
The cuts come just five months after Redwood cut 5% of its workforce, and three months after it closed a $425 million funding round that boosted the battery recycling company’s valuation to north of $6 billion, as TechCrunch previously reported.
It’s been a difficult time in the battery industry lately. Earlier this month, battery recycler Ascend Elements filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing “insurmountable” financial challenges. Some battery-makers have also restructured or gone out of business as the automotive industry in the U.S. has backed away from its most optimistic and ambitious plans to transition to electric vehicles.
But Redwood Materials founder and CEO JB Straubel told employees that this new round of cuts is not a sign that the company is heading down the same path.
“Redwood today is the strongest it’s ever been,” Straubel wrote in an email to the workers who weren’t laid off, according to a copy viewed by TechCrunch. “The materials business is well on its way to profitability and has an exciting roadmap ahead.”
Straubel noted that Redwood “continue[s] to dominate the US battery recycling market” but also touted the company’s “great momentum” in its new energy storage business. Redwood has recently announced deals with Crusoe AI and, most recently, electric automaker Rivian to provide recycled batteries that can be used to power those companies’ facilities. The company declined to comment beyond the contents of Straubel’s email.
In his message, Straubel wrote that “parts of the company have expanded faster than needed to support the direction” of Redwood. As a result, he said Redwood is making cuts across multiple divisions, including the engineering and operations organizations, according to an employee who was granted anonymity to discuss the layoffs.
Straubel went on to write that he is “more excited than ever with our path ahead as we build the most integrated and cost-effective critical materials and energy storage business in the world.”
“This is a self-sustaining business and will continue to make this company more valuable over time. We have the team and the technology to do what no other company can,” he wrote.
Workers who were laid off were told by Redwood’s chief HR officer that the layoffs were made “to sharpen our focus, our work and the size of our teams to support the direction Redwood is going in the future,” according to a copy of her email, which was viewed by TechCrunch.
Employees who were laid off are receiving severance and paid health benefits, according to Straubel’s email, as well as “career transition assistance.”
“I am grateful to the approximately 135 employees who we say goodbye to today — they’ve all contributed to building Redwood,” he wrote.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
Sean O’Kane is a reporter who has spent a decade covering the rapidly-evolving business and technology of the transportation industry, including Tesla and the many startups chasing Elon Musk. Most recently, he was a reporter at Bloomberg News where he helped break stories about some of the most notorious EV SPAC flops. He previously worked at The Verge, where he also covered consumer technology, hosted many short- and long-form videos, performed product and editorial photography, and once nearly passed out in a Red Bull Air Race plane.
You can contact or verify outreach from Sean by emailing sean.okane@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at okane.01 on Signal.
StrictlyVC kicks off the year in SF. Get in the room for unfiltered fireside chats with industry leaders, insider VC insights, and high-value connections that actually move the needle. Tickets are limited.
Read the full story at TechCrunch.
Polymarket launches trading of heavily leveraged 'perps' contracts
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/22/2026, 6:07:23 AM
Prediction markets platform Polymarket is expanding into trading of perpetual futures contacts, the company said Tuesday.
The announcement comes on the heels of a report from The Information that its main rival Kalshi has plans to offer crypto trading, including perpetuals. These are futures contracts that stay open indefinitely, allowing traders to hold leveraged exposure and exit anytime they want as long as they have enough funds to maintain it.
Polymarket has not specified whether its offering will include crypto perpetual futures, but the company is highly crypto friendly. It's built on the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains and denominates trades primarily in the stablecoin USDC. Crypto traders were major drivers of Polymarket's meteoric rise in 2024.
The move puts Kalshi — and perhaps Polymarket, if its offering includes crypto perpetuals — in more direct competition with Robinhood, Coinbase and Kraken, all of which have added prediction markets into their offerings in the past year, highlighting the value of young, speculative and risk-tolerant retail traders.
While not widely available in the U.S., international perpetuals, or "perps," became especially popular among the crypto crowd in the industry's early years as a workaround to traditional finance limitations. Almost a year ago, Coinbase spent $2.9 billion to acquire the crypto derivatives exchange Deribit — the largest M&A deal in crypto, which allowed the company to take on big international players like Binance.
In 2025, the top centralized crypto exchanges registered $86.2 trillion in annual perps volume and 47% growth from the previous year, according to CoinGecko.
By expanding into perps, Polymarket and Kalshi are tapping into derivatives trading at a time when cryptocurrency prices have stalled and trading activity has slowed – even if signs of longer-term institutional demand remain intact.
Perps have the ability to keep the ecosystem active by generating more consistent volume and allowing traders to speculate on short-term moves, hedge existing positions, and use leverage — regardless of the direction of the market.
Polymarket did not respond to a request for comment. Kalshi declined to comment.
—CNBC's Liz Napolitano contributed reporting.
Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship that includes a CNBC minority investment.
Judge dismisses Kash Patel's defamation lawsuit over claim he frequented 'nightclubs'
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/22/2026, 6:04:42 AM
A federal judge in Houston on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit by FBI Director Kash Patel that alleged he was defamed by former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi, who had said Patel has "been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of" the bureau's headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The lawsuit is not related to another defamation lawsuit that Patel filed Monday against The Atlantic magazine over an article that alleged he has abused alcohol. That civil complaint, filed in D.C. federal court, seeks $250 million in damages.
Figliuzzi, former assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, had made the comment about Patel on the MS Now show "Morning Joe."
"The Court finds that Figliuzzi's statement is rhetorical hyperbole that cannot
constitute defamation," U.S. District Court Judge George Hanks Jr. wrote in the decision.
"Accordingly, Dir. Patel has failed to state a claim against Figliuzzi, and his lawsuit must be dismissed."
CNBC has requested comment from lawyers for Patel and Figliuzzi.
In his decision, Hanks wrote that Figliuzzi's jibe about Patel, "when taken in context, cannot have been perceived by a person of ordinary intelligence as stating actual facts about Patel."
"As alleged, Figliuzzi's statement about Patel — again, made in response to a question about Patel's decreased visibility as Director of the FBI — was that 'he's been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of the Hoover building,' " the judge wrote.
"A person of reasonable intelligence and learning would not have taken his statement literally: that Dir. Patel has actually spent more hours physically in a nightclub than he has spent physically in his office building," Hanks wrote.
"By saying that Patel spent 'far more' time at nightclubs than his office, Figliuzzi delivered his answer 'in an exaggerated, provocative and amusing way,' employing rhetorical hyperbole."
This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.
For complete details, visit the original sources linked above.
Comments
Post a Comment