Redwood Materials has finally found a new chief financial officer roughly a year and a half after its last one departed. He\u2019s a familiar face to the former Tesla executives running the battery recycling and energy storage company.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Redwood Materials said it has hired former Tesla finance chief Deepak Ahuja as its new CFO. Ahuja joins an executive team that includes Tesla\u2019s former CTO (JB Straubel, Redwood\u2019s founder and CEO) and former Tesla powertrain vice president Colin Campbell (Redwood\u2019s CTO), among a number of other Tesla expats throughout the ranks. Most recently, Ahuja was chief finance and business officer at drone company Zipline.<\/p>\n
But despite Ahuja\u2019s many years running Tesla\u2019s finances, and a hot IPO market for anything remotely related to AI data centers, he tells TechCrunch that it\u2019s \u201ctoo early\u201d to talk about going public.<\/p>\n
\u201cNaturally, an IPO is a potential outcome for any private company, and we\u2019ll talk about it when the time is right,\u201d he said. Part of his caution, he said, was because Redwood Materials has so far had no trouble raising money from blue-chip investors. The company in January closed a $425 million Series E funding round that brought its total capital raised to more than $2 billion and its valuation to over $6 billion. It also added Google\u2019s and Nvidia\u2019s venture arm to its cap table.<\/p>\n
\u201cRedwood has, I\u2019d say, the cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me of investors already, who do have deep pockets,\u201d Ahuja said. \u201cIf they\u2019re excited, they\u2019ll fund. But I also expect that new investors will see what Redwood is doing, and they\u2019ll get equally excited, and will want to come in and invest and offer us, perhaps, good terms as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ahuja\u2019s appointment comes at a pivotal moment for Redwood Materials. The company recently lost its chief operating officer (another former Tesla exec) to retirement, along with at least three other vice presidents. Those executives left amidst a restructuring that affected 10% of its workforce (or around 135 employees), as TechCrunch first reported last month, while the company shifts resources toward its rapidly growing energy storage business.<\/p>\n
Ahuja told TechCrunch he is \u201cexcited by very innovative technology solutions that impact our climate [and] that address our energy needs,\u201d and he\u2019s stayed close with Straubel since the pair left Tesla in 2019. In fact, Ahuja told TechCrunch that he\u2019s a \u201csmall investor\u201d in Redwood Materials.<\/p>\n