Redwood Materials, the battery recycling and energy storage company founded by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, has brought on another Tesla veteran for a major leadership role.
Deepak Ahuja, the longtime Tesla executive who helped guide the company through its 2010 IPO, is joining Redwood as chief financial officer. This news comes just weeks after the company cut about 10% of its workforce.
Redwood announced Monday that Ahuja will take over as CFO after spending more than a year without a permanent finance chief. He replaces Jason Thompson, who left in late 2024, and joins the Nevada-based company at a particularly important moment.
Founded by Straubel in 2017, Redwood Materials has become one of the biggest names in battery recycling and reuse. The company has raised more than $2.3 billion from investors, including Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia's Nventures. As CNBC reported, it has lined up a $2 billion Department of Energy loan commitment. Its valuation is now above $6 billion.
Ahuja said his long relationship with Straubel played a big role in his decision to join the company. "Knowing JB for the last 18 years, I have huge respect for him as a leader, an engineer and as a thinker," he told CNBC.
The move comes less than a month after Redwood restructured and cut roughly 135 jobs, partly to put more resources into its energy division. Straubel told employees in an email that "Redwood today is the strongest it's ever been."
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Redwood hopes to do more than change its executive makeup. It sits in the middle of one of the fastest-growing parts of the cleaner economy: recovering valuable minerals from old batteries and turning used EV packs into storage systems that can help power homes, factories, and the grid.
Critical minerals such as lithium, nickel, and cobalt are essential for EVs, consumer electronics, defense systems, and energy products. Ahuja praised Redwood's work for helping those materials "stay within the country," as the U.S. pushes to build stronger domestic supply chains and rely less on imported materials.
Redwood started out focusing on "closed-loop" recycling, which CNBC described as turning battery scrap and retired EV batteries into raw material for new cells. Now, it is also building energy storage systems using repurposed, or "second-life," batteries.
That second business is becoming increasingly important. The company says factories, defense operations, grid stabilization needs, and the AI data center boom demand these materials. Redwood has already partnered with companies including Ford and Rivian and, according to CNBC, built a Texas microgrid with 12 megawatts and 63 megawatt-hours of capacity for AI infrastructure.
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Used batteries are becoming a valuable domestic energy asset. That could help lower costs over time, support more renewable power, and make the grid more reliable. All of those aspects are bringing more attention to battery recycling and reuse as a financially smart corner of the clean economy.
Ahuja's hiring suggests Redwood wants experienced financial leadership as it scales both its materials business and its newer energy arm.
"If we don't have battery systems, our grid is just falling behind," Ahuja told CNBC. For him, the mission is straightforward: "That's super motivating for me — the scale of how much this is going to grow, and the critical need for it in the country."
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