Redwood Materials chief operating officer Chris Lister is leaving the battery recycling company to retire, TechCrunch has learned â and heâs not the only executive that recently departed. Lister, a former vice president who led operations at Teslaâs Nevada Gigafactory, has been with Redwood since late 2023. He started as the companyâs chief supply chain officer and was quickly promoted to the COO role in 2024.
The promotion put him closer in the org chart to Redwood founder and CEO JB Straubel, who was Teslaâs longtime chief technology officer and currently sits on the automakerâs board. Redwood Materials recently informed employees that Lister was retiring, according to an employee who was granted anonymity to speak about the announcement. The company confirmed Listerâs departure to TechCrunch on Thursday.
âWe wish him the best in his retirement,â a spokesperson said via email. News of Listerâs retirement comes just a few days after TechCrunch revealed Redwood Materials recently laid off around 10% of its workforce, or roughly 135 employees. Those cuts were part of a restructuring that Straubel told employees about in an email viewed by TechCrunch earlier this week.
He said the shuffle will help support the companyâs growing energy storage business. Redwood has recently signed deals with automaker Rivian and artificial intelligence company Crusoe to provide refurbished batteries that can be used as grid storage. Other executives have left Redwood in recent months, too.
Bradley Mayhew, Redwoodâs vice president of integrated supply chain and a former Tesla employee, left the company earlier this month, according to LinkedIn. Guillermo Urquiza, Redwoodâs vice president of mechanical engineering â and another former Tesla employee â left in March. And Carlos Lozano, the companyâs vice president of manufacturing, left earlier this year for a leadership role at Panasonic, according to LinkedIn.
Mayhew, Urquiza, and Lozano didnât respond to requests for comment. Redwood declined to specifically comment on their departures, but noted that Straubel said in his all-staff email that he is trying to reduce layers of management at the company. â âWe are confident that we can deliver on our critical projects with a smaller team that is more focused,â he wrote.
