Welcoming Deepak Ahuja as Redwood's Chief Financial Officer

Redwood Materials is at an exciting and defining moment. The infrastructure challenges we were founded to solve - domestic energy storage and critical mineral supply - have moved from long-term thesis to immediate national priority. Scaling both urgently requires financial leadership built for complexity, long capital cycles, and close partnerships across the electrification ecosystem.  

Today, we're excited to share that Deepak Ahuja is joining Redwood Materials as our Chief Financial Officer.  

Deepak brings decades of financial leadership, most notably serving as Tesla's CFO across two tenures, where he helped take the company from early-stage startup through its 2010 IPO and on to the global company it is today. After Tesla, he served as CFO of Verily Life Sciences and then as Chief Business and Financial Officer at Zipline, the drone delivery and logistics company. He has been in leadership roles at several companies scaling something genuinely hard. 

His familiarity with Redwood's leadership team and his longstanding belief in the mission makes him the right person to help us build what comes next. 

We sat down with Deepak to hear what brought him to Redwood, how he thinks about the energy storage opportunity, and where he plans to focus first.  

What drew you to Redwood? 

Redwood is uniquely positioned to lead on two of the most critical infrastructure challenges the U.S. faces today. To stay globally competitive, America needs far more energy storage capacity and a reliable, domestic supply of critical minerals – cobalt, nickel, lithium – that are foundational not just to batteries, but to a range of industries where domestic sourcing carries the highest strategic value. Redwood is one of the very few companies positioned to supply these minerals at scale, from a domestic supply chain that no competitor can replicate.  

I've believed in this company from its inception, which is why I became an investor several years ago. Watching companies like Nvidia and Google join as investors made the opportunity even clearer and more compelling. Seeing organizations of that caliber recognize the importance of what Redwood is building, reinforced my conviction that this is the right moment to be here.  Joining when both businesses are scaling simultaneously is exactly the kind of moment I've been drawn to throughout my career. The company has a huge opportunity to scale massively and continue to bring innovative solutions for large-scale energy storage needs to market. Also, the need to recycle critical materials is a growing strategic imperative that we need to scale in smart ways. This requires a great deal of disciplined execution. I see the potential in Redwood to achieve this big vision. 

The U.S. is in the middle of a significant surge in energy demand. How do you think about that moment, and what role does Redwood play in it? 

The demand for power is accelerating while traditional grid interconnection is slowing down with multi-year backlogs in most major U.S. markets. That means behind-the-meter energy generation and off-grid architectures are no longer edge cases. They are near-term necessities for large power users. Data centers, industrial facilities, defense installations: none of them can wait for traditional grid expansion. 

What they need is reliable, cost-effective energy storage that can be deployed quickly. Storage is the obvious solution, and Redwood Energy has built one of the most compelling answers in the market, backed by a supply chain no competitor can replicate. The team has developed genuinely innovative power electronics and software architecture - anchored by their Pack Manager technology - that is purpose-built for what the industry needs to scale. 

Additionally, every second-life battery we deploy keeps critical minerals inside the U.S., reducing the cost of storage, and strengthening the grid at a moment when the grid needs it most. This is not a niche opportunity; it’s critical infrastructure for our nation. 

What will some of your first priorities be when you join? 

Redwood’s business has an incredibly wide scope. There are many dynamically moving pieces, and exciting innovations that the company is pursuing. My immediate priority is to first learn about the business by talking to people across several organizations in the company. Over time I intend to work closely with JB and other leaders to ensure that we are investing in the right long-term priorities and have robust plans to execute our growth strategy, which set us to be financially successful.  

Redwood sits at a unique intersection of recycling, materials manufacturing, and energy storage. How do you think about the financial opportunity across a vertically integrated business like that? 

Throughout my career I’ve seen how owning critical parts of the value chain creates resilience, disruption, and real value creation. Redwood has been deliberate in building this. The recycling operation feeds the materials business. The materials business enables the large-scale energy storage solutions Redwood is offering. And the energy storage solutions create demand for recycled feedstock. That closed loop is what makes Redwood structurally different from any other company operating in this space. Strategically balancing these initiatives is critical to our success - how we allocate capital, sequence investments and build the margins that create value. This is the work that gets me excited to dive into.   

You've seen what it takes to scale critical infrastructure companies from the inside. What does Redwood have that gives you confidence? 

The team, honestly. I worked alongside JB for a decade and have known him for almost two decades. I understand his leadership strengths and the immense value he brings to building new technologies in categories that didn’t exist before. Additionally, I’ve worked with several of the other leaders here at Redwood and what I've seen here is an incredibly talented group of people who are experts in the science and technology of batteries, understand the market, and are executing on their mission. 

Please join us in welcoming Deepak to the team.