Redwood materials lose COO amid removal, remodel

Redwood Materials CEO Chris Lister is leaving the battery recycling company to retire, TechCrunch has learned — and he’s not the only executive to leave recently.

Lister, who was a former vice president who led operations at Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory, has been with Redwood since the end of 2023. He started as the company’s CEO and was quickly promoted to COO in 2024. board.

Redwood Equipment recently told employees that Lister was retiring, according to an employee who was not named to discuss the announcement. The company confirmed Lister’s departure to TechCrunch on Thursday. “We wish him well in his retirement,” the spokesman said via email.

News of Lister’s retirement comes a few days later after TechCrunch revealed Redwood Materials recently laid off about 10% of its workforce, or about 135 workers.

These cuts were part of the restructuring that Straubel told employees in an email seen by TechCrunch earlier this week. He said the change would help the growing energy storage industry. Redwood recently signed a deal with automaker Rivian and technology company Crusoe to supply recycled batteries that can be used as grid storage.

Other directors have left Redwood in recent months, too.

Bradley Mayhew, a vice president at Redwood conglomerate and a former Tesla employee, left the company earlier this month, according to LinkedIn. Guillermo Urquiza, Redwood’s vice president of mechanical engineering — and another former Tesla employee — left in March. And Carlos Lozano, vice president of product development, left earlier this year to take a leadership position at Panasonic, according to LinkedIn.

Mayhew, Urquiza, and Lozano did not respond to requests for comment. Redwood declined to comment directly on the departures, but said that Straubel said in his email to all employees that he was trying to reduce management positions at the company.

Straubel also told employees in his message that “some areas of the company have grown faster than they should” and that he was “extremely pleased with the way we are moving forward as we build the most important and cost-effective and energy-saving devices in the world.”

“We are confident that we can carry out our most important tasks with a small and focused team,” he wrote. “We have successfully adapted to the changes in the market that have disrupted many of our competitors.”