Tesla finance chief Kirkhorn steps down

Tesla said Zachary Kirkhorn stepped down as its chief financial officer and named its accounting head, Vaibhav Taneja, as its new finance chief.

Kirkhorn, a company veteran of 13 years, stepped down from the role on Friday, although he will remain with Tesla through the end of the year.

The Elon Musk-led company did not specify a reason for Kirkhorn's departure.

"Being a part of this company is a special experience and I am extremely proud of the work we have done together since I joined over 13 years ago," Kirkhorn said in a LinkedIn post.

Taneja, 45, has been Tesla’s accounting chief since 2019. He held other roles at the EV maker before that and previously worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers in India and the U.S.

The unexpected departure adds new uncertainty for Tesla as it builds out production capacity to bring its Cybertruck pickup to market later this year and fend off rivals in the increasingly crowded EV market. The Austin-based company has been lowering prices to help maintain its position atop the EV industry.

Before Kirkhorn took over as CFO in early 2019 at the age of 34, Tesla had a long history of losses and occasionally burned more than $1 billion of cash per quarter. The company has been consistently profitable since then and repaid about $10 billion of debt in the last three years, helping it secure investment-grade ratings.

Kirkhorn, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, joined Tesla in March 2010 as a senior analyst in the finance department. He worked under his predecessors as CFO, Deepak Ahuja and Jason Wheeler.

Kirkhorn added “Master of Coin” to his job title in early 2021, about a month after Tesla disclosed it had made a $1.5 billion investment in Bitcoin. The tongue-in-cheek title was given at the same time Musk became “Technoking of Tesla.”

The company’s filing Monday did not mention “Master of Coin” as one of Taneja’s roles as new CFO.

Bloomberg and Reuters contributed to this report.