Former long-time Tesla CFO Deepak Ahuja joins JB Straubel’s Redwood Materials

Deepak Ahuja, who served as Tesla’s chief financial officer for 11 years across two separate stints, is joining Redwood Materials as CFO. The move reunites him with Tesla co-founder and former CTO JB Straubel.

The hire comes at a pivotal moment for Redwood, which recently laid off 10% of its workforce and lost several senior executives as it restructures around a fast-growing energy storage business.

Tesla reunion at Redwood

Ahuja was one of Tesla’s most consequential early hires. He joined the automaker in 2008 — when it was still a scrappy startup trying to survive — and helped navigate the company through a near-death cash crisis that same year. He retired from Tesla for the first time in 2015, returned in 2017 to replace Jason Wheeler, and then retired again in early 2019, handing the reins to Zach Kirkhorn.

Before Tesla, Ahuja spent 15 years at Ford Motor Company in a range of finance and operations leadership roles. After leaving Tesla, he served as CFO at Alphabet’s Verily and then as chief business and financial officer at drone delivery company Zipline.