Abstract: With the rapid development of new energy vehicles, electronic products and other industries, the demand for its core component lithium-ion batteries has increased significantly, but the environmental pollution and resource waste caused by waste lithium-ion batteries have become increasingly serious. Therefore, the harmless treatment of waste lithium-ion batteries and the effective recycling of the scarce valuable metals have become the hotspot and focus of research in domestic and foreign research institutes. The process of extracting valuable metals from the cathode materials of waste lithium-ion batteries is summarized: wet recovery process, fire roasting-wet metallurgy combined recovery process, biological leaching recovery process and other recovery processes. The principle, advantages and disadvantages of various methods are mainly described, and the future development direction of the recycling process is pointed out.