Tesla’s new CFO has two jobs and a lot of questions; outgoing CFO exits with $590M fortune

Tesla Inc. has a long history of promoting talent from within. Outside hires don’t last for very long in the carmaker’s scrappy, hard-charging culture, and it takes a certain stamina to work for Elon Musk.

Tesla’s new CFO, Vaibhav Taneja, already has a hefty gig serving as the company’s chief accounting officer. Tesla watchers were surprised to hear Monday that he was replacing Zach Kirkhorn, a 13-year Tesla veteran who abruptly stepped down from the CFO post.

While Kirkhorn has been a calm, steady presence and regularly spoke at length with investors, even playing the role of Musk’s surrogate the time he skipped Tesla’s earnings presentation, Taneja is less well-known. He has spoken briefly on just one Tesla earnings call, back in early 2019.

Taneja, 45, didn’t respond to a request for comment on Monday.

The change comes at a critical time for Tesla. The company is building a new factory in Mexico and preparing to bring its Cybertruck pickup to the market as it fends off rivals in the increasingly crowded EV market. Tesla has been cutting prices across its lineup to maintain its position atop the EV industry, and profitability has taken a hit.

Taneja started his career in New Delhi. He graduated in 1999 with a bachelor’s degree in commerce from Delhi University, according to his LinkedIn profile. He then spent almost 17 years at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Tesla’s longtime accounting firm.

He joined SolarCity in 2016 and became corporate controller. Tesla soon thereafter acquired the solar panel installer. The automaker’s shareholders later sued Musk and Tesla’s board, accusing them of hiding SolarCity’s financial woes.

Taneja became Tesla’s corporate controller in May 2018 and was named chief accounting officer in March 2019. His predecessor, Dave Morton, had been hired away from Seagate Technology Plc but resigned after less than a month.

Taneja owned about 105,000 shares of the company as of July 7, a stake that is currently valued at about $26 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The EV maker has just four executive officers: Musk, Drew Baglino, the senior vice president of powertrain and energy engineering; Tom Zhu, senior vice president of automotive; and now Taneja.

As for Kirkhorn, he amassed a net worth of $590 million during his four-year stint as CFO, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The number comprises mainly Tesla shares and options he received as compensation.

Still, the fortune accumulated by the carmaker’s outgoing designated “master of coin” pales in comparison to that of CEO and “technoking” Musk, whose $230.6 billion net worth is the largest in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Kirkhorn and other Tesla executives weren’t included in the enormous moonshot pay package that the Tesla board awarded Musk in 2018, which accelerated his trajectory to the top of the global wealth rankings.

Aside from a batch of options, which have a net value of about $550 million, Kirkhorn’s compensation was comparatively modest: $300,000 in base salary in 2022 and $31,099 in previously accrued paid time off that was applied toward the purchase of a Tesla, according to the company’s most recent proxy filing.

It’s not clear what Kirkhorn will do next. The Harvard and University of Pennsylvania-educated engineer, has worked for Musk at Tesla since 2010 and was regarded by analysts as a calm and measured counterpoint to his bombastic boss on earnings calls. Prior to joining the auto company he worked as an analyst at McKinsey & Co. and interned at Microsoft Corp.