Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer, Nextracker
Search every verified Alex Au interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Alex Au, co-founder and chief technology officer of Nextracker, described his role in leading the company's technology and engineering efforts in a 2016 executive profile. Au stated that his interest in mechanical engineering began with a tendency to break things and then fix them, and he noted his involvement in a solar car club at California Polytechnic State University, where the team built a car for a race from Washington, D.C., to Orlando, Florida. Au discussed Nextracker's approach to innovation, saying that when ideas are circulated, the team considers whether something has been done before, its difficulty, cost, and feasibility, and if they agree it is a better approach, they proceed. He said the company has "passed the point of solar" and emphasized that Nextracker takes customer feedback, innovates, and moves quickly. Au added that the company aims to create a "true package" rather than being the number one tracker, and that building infrastructure and intellectual property helps avoid creating one-off solutions for each customer.
“As CTO of NEXTracker, the most exciting thing for me right now is being a part of our tipping point when we circulate ideas here. A lot of times we talk about has anybody else done it before, is it hard, is it expensive, is it something we think we can do. If we all agree that it's a better approach, that's typically w...”
“We have passed the point of solar and that's an exciting thing for me. We're powered now, and one of our strengths here is that we take the feedback of customers, we innovate, and we move very quickly.”
“There's so much that you can do when you think about the big picture of a product where you can really dial in a solution. I think that's the core of everything everyone's doing here.”
“We didn't want to be the number one tracker. I think that's a function of the work that we're going to do. The exciting part is taking that to the next step and really putting something together that's a true package.”
Alex Au leads NEXTracker's #technology and #engineering, driving the creation of our solar and storage product suite.
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