‘Too early’ to talk IPO, Redwood Materials’ incoming CFO says
‘Too early’ to talk IPO, Redwood Materials’ incoming CFO says
Redwood Materials 新任 CFO：谈 IPO 为时尚早
Redwood Materials has finally found a new chief financial officer roughly a year and a half after its last one departed. He’s a familiar face to the former Tesla executives running the battery recycling and energy storage company. On Monday, Redwood Materials said it has hired former Tesla finance chief Deepak Ahuja as its new CFO.
在上一任首席财务官离职约一年半后，Redwood Materials 终于找到了继任者。对于这家由前特斯拉高管运营的电池回收与储能公司来说，这位新任 CFO 是一位“熟面孔”。周一，Redwood Materials 宣布聘请前特斯拉财务主管 Deepak Ahuja 出任公司新任 CFO。
Ahuja joins an executive team that includes Tesla’s former CTO (JB Straubel, Redwood’s founder and CEO) and former Tesla powertrain vice president Colin Campbell (Redwood’s CTO), among a number of other Tesla expats throughout the ranks. Most recently, Ahuja was chief finance and business officer at drone company Zipline.
Ahuja 加入的执行团队中，包括特斯拉前首席技术官（Redwood 创始人兼 CEO JB Straubel）和前特斯拉动力总成副总裁 Colin Campbell（Redwood 首席技术官），公司内部还有许多其他来自特斯拉的员工。在加入 Redwood 之前，Ahuja 担任无人机公司 Zipline 的首席财务与业务官。
But despite Ahuja’s many years running Tesla’s finances, and a hot IPO market for anything remotely related to AI data centers, he tells TechCrunch that it’s “too early” to talk about going public. “Naturally, an IPO is a potential outcome for any private company, and we’ll talk about it when the time is right,” he said.
尽管 Ahuja 拥有多年管理特斯拉财务的经验，且当前与人工智能数据中心沾边的 IPO 市场十分火热，但他向 TechCrunch 表示，现在谈论上市“为时尚早”。他说：“对于任何私营公司来说，IPO 自然是一个潜在的结果，我们会在时机成熟时再讨论这个问题。”
Part of his caution, he said, was because Redwood Materials has so far had no trouble raising money from blue-chip investors. The company in January closed a $425 million Series E funding round that brought its total capital raised to more than $2 billion and its valuation to over $6 billion. It also added Google’s and Nvidia’s venture arm to its cap table.
他表示，保持谨慎的部分原因是 Redwood Materials 目前从蓝筹投资者那里筹集资金并无困难。该公司在 1 月份完成了 4.25 亿美元的 E 轮融资，使其融资总额超过 20 亿美元，估值超过 60 亿美元。此外，谷歌和英伟达的风险投资部门也已进入其股东名单。
“Redwood has, I’d say, the crème de la crème of investors already, who do have deep pockets,” Ahuja said. “If they’re excited, they’ll fund. But I also expect that new investors will see what Redwood is doing, and they’ll get equally excited, and will want to come in and invest and offer us, perhaps, good terms as well.”
“我认为 Redwood 已经拥有了最顶尖的投资者，他们资金雄厚，”Ahuja 说道。“如果他们感到兴奋，他们就会注资。但我同样期待新投资者能看到 Redwood 的业务，他们也会感到兴奋，并希望加入投资，或许还能为我们提供优厚的条件。”
Ahuja’s appointment comes at a pivotal moment for Redwood Materials. The company recently lost its chief operating officer (another former Tesla exec) to retirement, along with at least three other vice presidents. Those executives left amidst a restructuring that affected 10% of its workforce (or around 135 employees), as TechCrunch first reported last month, while the company shifts resources toward its rapidly growing energy storage business.
Ahuja 的任命正值 Redwood Materials 的关键时刻。该公司最近因首席运营官（另一位前特斯拉高管）退休，以及至少三位副总裁离职而面临人事变动。正如 TechCrunch 上个月首次报道的那样，这些高管是在公司进行重组期间离职的，此次重组影响了 10% 的员工（约 135 人），公司目前正将资源转向其快速增长的储能业务。
Ahuja told TechCrunch he is “excited by very innovative technology solutions that impact our climate [and] that address our energy needs,” and he’s stayed close with Straubel since the pair left Tesla in 2019. In fact, Ahuja told TechCrunch that he’s a “small investor” in Redwood Materials. “In so many ways, it felt like a natural fit, in terms of the energy storage business, the recycling business — all of these are such critical needs for our country and our society that it felt like the right place to be,” he said.
Ahuja 告诉 TechCrunch，他“对那些影响气候并解决能源需求的创新技术解决方案感到兴奋”，自 2019 年两人离开特斯拉以来，他一直与 Straubel 保持密切联系。事实上，Ahuja 告诉 TechCrunch，他本人也是 Redwood Materials 的一名“小股东”。他说：“在很多方面，这感觉非常契合。无论是储能业务还是回收业务，这些都是我们国家和社会迫切需要的，我觉得这里就是我该来的地方。”
There is an undeniable amount of hype around AI, with SpaceX about to go public, OpenAI and Anthropic rumored to be considering IPOs, and billions of dollars being raised to build data centers. Redwood’s energy storage business is initially targeted at helping AI data centers manage their power loads, though Ahuja said he’s not worried about getting swept up in the exuberance.
围绕人工智能的炒作不可否认，SpaceX 即将上市，OpenAI 和 Anthropic 传闻正在考虑 IPO，数十亿美元资金正涌入数据中心建设。Redwood 的储能业务最初旨在帮助人工智能数据中心管理电力负载，但 Ahuja 表示，他不担心会被这种狂热冲昏头脑。
“I think JB and I both have seen so many cycles of hype and disillusion in our lives that we’re going to be very mindful and conscious of how we message, how we manage, and how we grow the company,” he said. “We’re dealing with hardware here, which, by definition, brings a certain degree of sanity” compared to what’s happening at the software-focused AI companies, he added.
“我认为 JB 和我在生活中都见证了太多的炒作与幻灭周期，所以我们会非常谨慎和清醒地对待我们如何传达信息、如何管理以及如何发展公司，”他说。“我们处理的是硬件业务，从定义上讲，这比那些专注于软件的 AI 公司所经历的情况要理智得多。”