San Diego’s ecoATM, a creator of kiosks for recycling cellphones and other mobile electronics, has a new financial backer, with Cowen Sustainable Advisors taking a $200 million minority stake in the organization.

Cowen joins private equity firm Apollo Global Management, which remains the greater part proprietor of ecoATM. A representative declined to reveal the percentage of Cowen’s proprietorship stake or the valuation of privately held ecoATM.

The firm as of now works 4,300 automated e-waste recycling kiosks over the U.S., as well as 54 kiosks in the United Kingdom and Germany. Around 30 ecoATM machines have been installed in retail revolves around San Diego.

Over the past three years, the organization says it has included about 2,000 kiosks globally.

“The business has been growing well,” said Yanyan Ji, ecoATM’s chief marketing officer. “We have been expanding in San Diego and globally.”

Cowen Sustainable Advisors is a division of Cowen Inc., an enormous financial services firm and investment bank. The fund centers around green technology.

“That is exactly what we are doing,” said Ji. “We are a company born to develop green technology to solve the world’s e-waste problem.”

Since it was established in 2008, ecoATM says it has kept 25 million cellphones out of landfills. A year ago alone, it recycled 5 million gadgets. ecoATM employs 466 laborers around the world, including 280 at its San Diego headquarters.

In 2016, Apollo Global Management paid $1.6 billion for ecoAtM’s previous parent organization, Outerwall. After the acquisition, Apollo split Outerwall into three separate organizations ­­—Redbox, Coinstar, and ecoATM.

Coming out of the 2008 recession, ecoATM was one of San Diego’s startup success stories. Publicly traded Outerwall gained ecoATM in 2013 for $350 million. Be that as it may, it attempted to accomplish anticipated financial outcomes, which eventually prompted its sale to Apollo.

ecoATM kiosks scan undesirable mobile electronic gadgets, verifies the recognizable proof of sellers and afterward gives money. The organization makes cash by reselling utilized cell phones to wholesalers or directly to clients through its Gazelle website and other online marketplaces.

“Our company is very profitable,” said Ji. “We just recently secured $150 million in debt from a major bank, and that only shows the confidence the banks have in the business.”

The organization intends to utilize obligation financing to grow its kiosk footprint and invest in technology.

At the point when the deal closes not long from now, Vusal Najafov and Ewa Kozicz, co-heads of Cowen Sustainable Advisors, will join ecoATM’s board of directors.

“The Cowen team has a deep understanding of the potential of ecoATM and of the significant impact our company has on sustainability factors throughout the consumer electronics vertical,” said ecoATM Chief Executive Dave Maquera in a statement.