Redwood Materials hires former Tesla finance chief Deepak Ahuja as CFO

Redwood Materials has brought in former Tesla finance chief Deepak Ahuja as chief financial officer, a hire that signals the battery-recycling company is moving deeper into the capital-heavy phase of building a domestic materials business.

Ahuja, who served as Tesla’s CFO from 2017 to 2019, joins a company founded in 2017 by JB Straubel, Tesla’s former chief technology officer and current board member. Straubel’s close relationship with Ahuja appears to have been a major factor in the move. Ahuja had first joined Tesla in 2008 and helped steer the automaker through its 2010 initial public offering before later working at Verily and Zipline.

The appointment comes as Redwood tries to scale a business that sits at the intersection of battery recycling, critical minerals and energy storage. The company extracts lithium, cobalt and nickel from recycled batteries and also makes battery-energy-storage systems used in data centers, tying its fortunes not only to electric vehicles but also to the broader AI infrastructure buildout. That mix makes financial discipline especially important. The company is not just collecting scrap; it is trying to build a domestic supply chain for materials that matter to consumer electronics, electric vehicles, defense products and large storage systems.

Redwood has already drawn in more than $2.3 billion from venture and strategic backers, including Google, Nvidia’s Nventures, Microsoft, OMERS and Eclipse. It has also secured a $2 billion loan commitment from the Energy Department. CNBC reported the startup’s valuation is above $6 billion, underscoring how much capital the industry now requires before recycling can become a large-scale industrial business rather than a climate narrative.

Ahuja’s hiring reflects how much the battery-recycling sector has matured. The next phase is less about proving the concept and more about financing factories, managing supply chains and navigating volatile demand for EVs and storage. For Redwood, heavyweight financial leadership now looks less like a luxury than a requirement.