Redwood Materials loses COO amid layoffs, restructuring

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, a former vice president who led operations at Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory, has been with Redwood since late 2023. He started as the company’s head of supply chain and was quickly promoted to the role of COO in 2024. The promotion brought him closer on the org chart to Redwood technology founder and CEO and longtime CEO JB. currently sits on the automotive board.

Redwood Materials recently informed employees that Lister had retired, according to an employee who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak about the announcement. The company confirmed Lister’s departure to TechCrunch on Thursday. “We wish him the best in his retirement,” a spokesman said via email.

News of Lister’s retirement comes just days after TechCrunch revealed that Redwood Materials recently laid off about 10% of its workforce, or about 135 employees.

Those cuts were part of a restructuring Straubel told employees about in an email seen by TechCrunch earlier this week. He said the spin-off would help support the company’s growing energy storage business. Redwood 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, as well.

Bradley Mayhew, Redwood’s vice president of integrated supply chain and a former Tesla employee, left the company earlier this month, according to LinkedIn. Guillermo Urquiza, Redwood’s vice president of engineering — and another former Tesla employee — left in March. And Carlos Lozano, the company’s vice president of manufacturing, left earlier this year for a leadership role at Panasonic, according to LinkedIn.

Mayhew, Urquiza and Lozano did not respond to requests for comment. Redwood declined to comment specifically on their departures, but noted that Straubel said in the all-staff email that he is trying to reduce management levels at the company.

Straubel also told his employees in his message that “parts of the company have expanded faster than necessary” and that he was “more excited than ever about our path forward as we build the most integrated and cost-effective critical materials and energy storage business in the world.”

“We are confident that we can deliver on our critical projects with a smaller team that is more focused,” he wrote. “We have successfully adapted to market changes that have bankrupted many of our competitors.”