Redwood Materials loses its chief operating officer amid layoffs and restructuring

Chris Lester, chief operating officer of Redwood Materials, is leaving the battery recycling company to retire, TechCrunch has learned — and he’s not the only CEO to depart recently.

Lester, 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 chief supply chain officer and was quickly promoted to chief operating officer in 2024. The promotion moved him closer in the org chart to Redwood founder and CEO JB Straubel, who was Tesla’s longtime chief technology officer and currently sits on the automaker’s board of directors.

Redwood Materials recently informed employees that Lester was retiring, according to an employee who was granted anonymity to talk about the announcement. The company confirmed Lister’s departure to TechCrunch on Thursday. “We wish him the best in his retirement,” a club 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 roughly 135 employees.

These cuts were part of a restructuring process that Straubel told employees about in an email seen by TechCrunch earlier this week. He said the change would help support the company’s growing energy storage business. Redwood recently signed deals with automaker Rivian and AI 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 former Tesla employee, left the company earlier this month, according to LinkedIn. Guillermo Urquiza, Redwood’s vice president of mechanical engineering — and another former Tesla employee — left in March. Carlos Lozano, the company’s vice president of manufacturing, left earlier this year to take 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 his email to all employees that he was trying to reduce layers of management at the company.

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

“We are confident in our ability to deliver on our important projects with a smaller, more focused team,” he wrote. “We have successfully adapted to changes in the market that have bankrupted many of our competitors.”