Redwood Supplies loses COO amid layoffs, restructuring

Redwood Supplies chief working officer Chris Lister is leaving the battery recycling firm to retire, TechCrunch has realized — and he’s not the one govt that not too long ago departed.

Lister, a former vice chairman who led operations at Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory, has been with Redwood since late 2023. He began as the corporate’s chief provide chain officer and was rapidly promoted to the COO position in 2024. The promotion put him nearer within the org chart to Redwood founder and CEO JB Straubel, who was Tesla’s longtime chief know-how officer and at the moment sits on the automaker’s board.

Redwood Supplies not too long ago knowledgeable staff that Lister was retiring, in line with an worker who was granted anonymity to talk about the announcement. The corporate confirmed Lister’s departure to TechCrunch on Thursday. “We want him the very best in his retirement,” a spokesperson stated by way of e-mail.

Information of Lister’s retirement comes only a few days after TechCrunch revealed Redwood Supplies not too long ago laid off round 10% of its workforce, or roughly 135 staff.

These cuts had been a part of a restructuring that Straubel instructed staff about in an e-mail considered by TechCrunch earlier this week. He stated the shuffle will assist assist the corporate’s rising vitality storage enterprise. Redwood has not too long ago signed offers with automaker Rivian and synthetic intelligence firm Crusoe to supply refurbished batteries that can be utilized as grid storage.

Different executives have left Redwood in current months, too.

Bradley Mayhew, Redwood’s vice chairman of built-in provide chain and a former Tesla worker, left the corporate earlier this month, in line with LinkedIn. Guillermo Urquiza, Redwood’s vice chairman of mechanical engineering — and one other former Tesla worker — left in March. And Carlos Lozano, the corporate’s vice chairman of producing, left earlier this 12 months for a management position at Panasonic, in line with LinkedIn.

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’s making an attempt to scale back layers of administration on the firm.

Straubel additionally instructed staff in his message that “components of the corporate have expanded quicker than wanted” and that he was “extra excited than ever with our path forward as we construct essentially the most built-in and cost-effective crucial supplies and vitality storage enterprise on the planet.”

“We’re assured that we are able to ship on our crucial tasks with a smaller crew that’s extra targeted,” he wrote. “We’ve efficiently tailored to adjustments out there which have bankrupted a lot of our opponents.”