Redwood Fabrics leader working officer Chris Lister is leaving the battery recycling corporate to retire, TechCrunch has realized — and he’s no longer the one government that not too long ago departed.
Lister, a former vice chairman who led operations at Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory, has been with Redwood since overdue 2023. He began as the corporate’s leader provide chain officer and was once briefly promoted to the COO function in 2024. The promotion put him nearer within the org chart to Redwood founder and CEO JB Straubel, who was once Tesla’s longtime leader generation officer and these days sits at the automaker’s board.
Redwood Fabrics not too long ago knowledgeable workers that Lister was once retiring, consistent with an worker who was once granted anonymity to discuss the announcement. The corporate showed Lister’s departure to TechCrunch on Thursday. “We would like him the most efficient in his retirement,” a spokesperson stated by way of e mail.
Information of Lister’s retirement comes only some days after TechCrunch published Redwood Fabrics not too long ago laid off round 10% of its personnel, or kind of 135 workers.
The ones cuts had been a part of a restructuring that Straubel instructed workers about in an e mail considered through TechCrunch previous this week. He stated the shuffle will lend a hand toughen the corporate’s rising power garage industry. Redwood has not too long ago signed offers with automaker Rivian and synthetic intelligence corporate Crusoe to supply refurbished batteries that can be utilized as grid garage.
Different executives have left Redwood in contemporary months, too.
Bradley Mayhew, Redwood’s vice chairman of built-in provide chain and a former Tesla worker, left the corporate previous this month, consistent with LinkedIn. Guillermo Urquiza, Redwood’s vice chairman of mechanical engineering — and some other former Tesla worker — left in March. And Carlos Lozano, the corporate’s vice chairman of producing, left previous this 12 months for a management function at Panasonic, consistent with LinkedIn.
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Mayhew, Urquiza, and Lozano didn’t reply to requests for remark. Redwood declined to particularly touch upon their departures, however famous that Straubel stated in his all-staff e mail that he is making an attempt to scale back layers of control on the corporate.
Straubel additionally instructed workers in his message that “portions of the corporate have expanded sooner than wanted” and that he was once “extra excited than ever with our trail forward as we construct probably the most built-in and cost-effective important fabrics and effort garage industry on this planet.”
“We’re assured that we will be able to ship on our important initiatives with a smaller group this is extra targeted,” he wrote. “We’ve effectively tailored to adjustments out there that experience bankrupted a lot of our competition.”
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