Jb Straubel on entrepreneurship
From Tesla's cofounder JB Straubel is coming back to join Tesla! · · Matt Pocius on Tesla Stock & Money
“I love being an entrepreneur. You know, for me that's part of the fun. You know, many people asked, you know, why on Earth would I possibly leave this, you know, CTO role at Tesla? It was this wonderful job, people would fight for this role, and it was fabulous. But I love being an entrepreneur.”
On , Jb Straubel, Cofounder at Tesla, spoke about entrepreneurship during Tesla's cofounder JB Straubel is coming back to join Tesla! on Matt Pocius on Tesla Stock & Money.
About Jb Straubel
JB Straubel, co-founder of Tesla and founder and CEO of Redwood Materials, has been focused on building a circular supply chain for lithium-ion batteries. In 2025, he announced a new initiative called Redwood Energy, which repurposes used EV battery packs into a microgrid to power an AI training data center, describing it as an array of hundreds of old automotive battery packs that can provide 3 to 5 years of additional usable life. Straubel stated that Redwood Materials currently recycles approximately 70 to 75% of all lithium-ion batteries in the U.S. and is the second largest supplier of nickel and lithium from recycled materials in the country, doing so profitably without federal subsidies. He has also discussed the importance of scaling manufacturing, noting that the company processes around 20 to 25 gigawatt-hours of material per year and that the volume of incoming material is doubling annually. Straubel has commented on policy and industry trends, expressing cautious optimism about the future of the U.S. battery industry. He said that the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act "missed the mark a little bit" by de-incentivizing midstream investment, but suggested there is a pathway for the new administration to reconcile the law to make it more effective. He described electrification as a "multi-decade transition" and stated that EVs have "clearly crossed a tipping point," though he acknowledged turbulence around incentives. Straubel also said he remains "super confident" in Tesla's talent pool and described the future as "pretty exciting for energy, for transportation, for autonomy."