JB Straubel

Who they are

JB Straubel is Founder and CEO of Redwood Materials — co-founded Tesla in 2003 as its CTO, then left to build the closed-loop battery recycling company he'd been thinking about for years.

Person

Straubel did both his BS in Energy Systems Engineering and his MS in Energy Engineering at Stanford — the academic grounding was always applied, not theoretical, and he was building custom electric vehicles in his 20s before it was a viable industry. He co-founded Volacom, a hybrid electric aircraft venture, then joined the propulsion side of Rosen Motors before co-founding Tesla in 2003 as its first CTO — a role he held for 16 years through the Roadster, Model S, and Gigafactory era. He founded Redwood Materials in 2017 when it was roughly 50 employees in stealth, self-seeding the company out of his Tesla experience with the conviction that the battery supply chain was as important as the vehicle itself. Outside his operational roles, he lectures at Stanford in the Atmosphere and Energy Program, teaching the Energy Storage Integration class, and sits on the Tesla board as an independent director — elected in 2023 — and on QuantumScape's Strategic Advisory Board. He speaks publicly on battery recycling, circular economy mechanics, and the domestic critical-minerals supply chain — at TechCrunch Disrupt, Milken Institute Global Conference 2026, Climate One, and Stanford's Doerr School of Sustainability. The through-line across Volacom, Tesla, and Redwood is the same bet placed three times at increasing scale: electrification is inevitable, so build the infrastructure layer that makes it work.

Company

Redwood's freshest move is its $425 million Series E close in January 2026 — led by Eclipse and notable for pulling in Google and NVIDIA's NVentures as strategic investors, the latter driven explicitly by AI data center power demand. The round valued Redwood above $6 billion. That came on the heels of a $350 million first close of the same Series E in October 2025, led by Eclipse and NVentures. In June 2025 the company launched Redwood Energy, a new business line that repurposes retired EV batteries into grid-scale energy storage — the Google and NVIDIA bets are directly tied to that product. South Carolina operations went live in November 2025, positioning Redwood as the largest domestic critical minerals processor. One notable backstory: Redwood withdrew from a $2 billion conditional DOE loan commitment in late 2024 ahead of anticipated policy changes — then raised private capital instead.

Market

Redwood sits at the intersection of battery recycling and domestic critical-minerals production, a space getting reshaped by geopolitics: China controls roughly 60% of global lithium processing and 80% of cobalt refining, which has pushed capital and policy toward U.S.-based alternatives. Li-Cycle, the most prominent rival, filed for bankruptcy in May 2025 — leaving Ascend Elements, Aqua Metals, and Mangrove Lithium as the remaining scaled competitors, all smaller. The IRA's federal tax credits for domestic battery recycling are a structural tailwind, though the policy environment remains fluid, as Redwood's DOE loan withdrawal demonstrated.

Network

Deepak Ahuja, the former long-tenure Tesla CFO, joined Redwood Materials — bringing institutional finance credibility from the same Tesla lineage. On the advisory side, Straubel sits on QuantumScape's Strategic Advisory Board, which connects him into the solid-state battery R&D world. No additional named network edges are available from the claims.

Deepak Ahuja· Former Tesla CFO, joined Redwood Materials

How they likely show up

Founded Redwood in 2017 and has run it for eight years through multiple funding rounds and operational launches → thinks in decade-scale arcs; unlikely to be interested in short-horizon tactics.
Stanford BS and MS in energy engineering followed by propulsion engineering at Rosen Motors → grounds abstract energy policy arguments in physical systems and first-principles math; expects the same from others.
Active public speaker across TechCrunch Disrupt, Milken, Climate One, and Stanford — on the same consistent themes (battery supply chain, circular economy) → comfortable being the public face of an argument, not just a company.
Built Volacom, co-founded Tesla, co-founded Redwood — three companies, each one infrastructurally earlier in the stack than the last → high-conviction pattern-matcher who sees the enabling layer others haven't built yet.
Withdrew from a $2 billion DOE loan ahead of policy shifts rather than waiting it out, then raised $425 million privately instead → makes preemptive structural moves; doesn't wait for external catalysts to force his hand.
Lectures at Stanford on Energy Storage Integration alongside running a multi-billion-dollar company → values teaching and first-principles communication; Possibly — responds well to people who show genuine technical curiosity.

Conversation tips

→ Come in with a specific technical question about the battery materials stack — he has the engineering MS and 16 years building at Tesla; surface-level EV enthusiasm won't hold his attention.
→ The DOE loan withdrawal is worth asking about directly — it's a revealing strategic decision and he's presumably thought hard about the policy logic.
→ Reference Redwood Energy (the June 2025 grid-storage launch) specifically, not just the recycling business — it's the newest bet and the reason Google and NVIDIA showed up.
→ He lectures at Stanford; if you have a genuine question about how the domestic critical-minerals supply chain actually works mechanically, ask it — he's in teaching mode when the question is real.
→ Don't conflate the Tesla chapter with the Redwood chapter — he left Tesla to solve the problem Tesla created (battery end-of-life); treat them as sequential, not overlapping.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on Redwood Energy — launched June 2025, repurposing retired EV batteries into grid-scale storage, and it's the explicit reason Google and NVIDIA's NVentures invested in the January 2026 Series E. That's a sharp pivot from recycling toward power infrastructure.
The DOE loan withdrawal is a specific, unusual move — Redwood walked away from a $2 billion conditional commitment in late 2024 ahead of policy changes, then raised $425 million privately six months later. It's a window into how he reads political risk.
He's been lecturing at Stanford on Energy Storage Integration while running Redwood — the Stanford Doerr School talk where he told innovators to 'reinvent everything' is a clear signal of how he frames the problem; referencing it shows you've done more than a LinkedIn scan.

Discovery questions

When you launched Redwood Energy in June 2025, was the AI data-center power angle part of the original thesis, or did Google and NVIDIA's interest change how you thought about the market?
Walking away from the $2 billion DOE loan — how do you think about the tradeoff between government capital and the operational constraints that come with it, especially now that the policy environment has shifted?
You're eight years into Redwood and the recycling-to-materials loop is becoming real — at what point does the recovered material volume start to meaningfully displace virgin mining inputs, and what's the bottleneck?

Avoid

Don't lead with generic clean-energy optimism or EV market growth statistics — he operates at the supply-chain and materials-chemistry level, and surface-level enthusiasm signals you haven't engaged with the actual problem he's solving.

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