About Alex Au
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.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Alex Au's recent appearances.
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Transcript (1 segments)
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Alex Au0:05
My name is Alex Au, CTO of Nextracker. I got interested in mechanical engineering because I was always breaking something, so then I had to fix it. I was part of the solar car club at Cal Poly; we entered a race from Washington, DC to Orlando, Florida, just on a car that we built from scratch. As the 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 what we start. And do we have? Pass the point of solar, and that's the exciting thing for me. We're powered now. 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 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. When you bring those types of efficiencies together, it makes it a lot easier for your customers because they're not worried about buying and sourcing from multiple vendors. We've spent a lot of time building the infrastructure, so we're not only developing product, but we're thinking about at the core of our IP what we can do to make sure that we're not doing a one-off for every single customer. This is what people are going to, and for me it's a huge accomplishment.
