Tesla’s head of operations at Gigafactory Texas seems to have taken a role working with SpaceX’s Starship, according to a few people familiar with the matter.
Omead Afshar has been named Vice President of Starship production at SpaceX, according to unnamed sources, reports Bloomberg.
It’s unclear if Afshar is working at both companies, though he hasn’t been spotted at Giga Texas in several weeks, two of the sources said. Afshar’s LinkedIn profile still lists his work at Tesla, including a cowboy emoji for a job title.
The news comes after Afshar faced internal scrutiny at Tesla in July, following plans to purchase difficult-to-get materials for construction. In the wake of the incident, some employees were fired and it was thought that Afshar would leave Tesla, according to a few people familiar with the matter.
SpaceX Plans Starship Super Heavy Launch in ‘Early December’, Says NASA https://t.co/8BPRBVYFxM
— TeslaNorth.com (@RealTeslaNorth) October 31, 2022
The sources asked to remain anonymous and neither Tesla or Afshar immediately responded to requests for comment.
Elon Musk’s businesses have been known to shift around executives from one company to the next.
Just a week ago, Musk deployed around 50 Tesla engineers at his new company Twitter to help take a look at the social media platform’s source code.
SpaceX and Tesla also share Charles Kuehmann, the Vice President of Material Engineering at both of the companies.
