Tesla shareholders elect former CTO, co-founder JB Straubel to board

JB Straubel is formally again at Tesla — this time as a board member.

The previous Tesla CTO and co-founder was elected by shareholders Tuesday as an unbiased board of director. A crowd of Tesla shareholders, who had been on the firm’s Gigafactory Texas in Austin for the occasion, cheered when the preliminary outcomes had been learn and Straubel was formally declared its latest board member.

Shareholders elected three administrators to serve for a three-year time period. Tesla had nominated Musk, present chair Robyn Denholm and Straubel.

Previous to Tesla’s 2023 shareholder assembly, Tesla’s eight-person board was comprised of Musk, his brother Kimbal Musk, lra Ehrenpreis, chair Robyn Denholm, Hiromichi Mizuno, Joe Gebbia, James Murdoch and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson.

Straubel, who at the moment runs the battery supplies and recycling firm he based, will take over the spot vacated by Mizuno, the previous chief funding officer of Japan’s $1.5 trillion pension fund. Mizuno joined the board and its audit committee in 2020 and won’t stand for re-election.

Straubel joined Tesla in 2004 and was CTO for 14 years. He was largely considered because the quiet regular hand behind its controversial CEO. Straubel was chargeable for among the firm’s most necessary know-how, notably round batteries. Consequently, he’s a wildly in style govt. When he was nominated to the board, it was assumed he could be elected to the place.

Throughout his tenure at Tesla, Straubel led the development and idea of Gigafactory Nevada and the manufacturing ramp of its Mannequin 3 sedan. Straubel left Tesla in 2019. Drew Baglino, vp of know-how, took over his duties. On the time, Tesla mentioned Straubel would keep on in a senior advisor position.

After Straubel left the automaker he threw himself into scaling Redwood Supplies, a battery supplies provider and recycler that was based in 2017. Redwood Supplies, which relies in Carson Metropolis, Nevada, has since landed tons of of hundreds of thousands in company and enterprise capital and locked in a number of high-profile buyer offers with firms like Panasonic and Amazon.