Gbolabo Odunaiya, Lucid‘s Senior Director of Advanced Manufacturing Engineering, has left the Saudi-backed EV maker, weeks after Chief Executive Officer Silvio Napoli delayed production of its third model to the second half of 2027 from late 2026.
“After almost 11 years, my time at Lucid Motors has come to an end,” Odunaiya wrote in a LinkedIn post published last week, while announcing that he has joined AI infrastructure company IREN.
He has joined IREN as VP of Industrialized Delivery and Modular Construction, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, starting in September, his LinkedIn profile shows.
The departure follows that of Andrew Bailey, Lucid’s Head of Global Logistics, who said on Thursday he had joined humanoid robot maker Figure AI.
Employee No. 249
Odunaiya said he joined Atieva, as Lucid was then called, in early 2016 as employee No. 249 and its first manufacturing engineering hire, “working alongside fewer than 100 people at the time.”
He started at Lucid as a Senior Manufacturing Engineer, then was promoted to Manufacturing Engineering Manager months later. In March 2020, in the early days of COVID-19, he was elevated to Senior Manager of Manufacturing Engineering.
His most recent role was Senior Director of Advanced Manufacturing Engineering, which he held from February 2024, according to his profile.
He was previously Director of Manufacturing Engineering in Newark, California, from April 2021, and before that Senior Manager and Manager of Manufacturing Engineering.
Odunaiya said he built “a world-class Manufacturing Engineering organization of ~110 top-tier professionals from scratch.”
He said the team launched the Lucid Air, “including all variants up to Sapphire,” and the Gravity SUV, Lucid’s only two models on sale.
It also delivered “North America’s first greenfield EV plant in Arizona during COVID-19 in record time, as well as our second complex in Saudi Arabia,” he wrote.
Lucid started Air production at its Casa Grande, Arizona, plant in September 2021, and opened its AMP-2 plant in King Abdullah Economic City, Saudi Arabia, in September 2023.
There, the company assembles both Air and Gravity vehicles from the kits shipped from its US plant.
Before Lucid, Odunaiya was a Lead Manufacturing Engineer at Tesla‘s Fremont, California, factory from 2013 to 2016, and an industrial and process engineer at Ford from 2011 to 2013.
‘Keep People First’
In his post, Odunaiya thanked several former Lucid executives who have since left the company, including former Chief Executive Officer Peter Rawlinson, former Chief Operating Officer and interim CEO Marc Winterhoff, and former Senior VP of Engineering and Software Emad Dlala.
Zach Walker, one of the engineering colleagues Odunaiya thanked in his post, left Lucid for General Motors in April.
He also thanked design chief Derek Jenkins, “for whom I have the utmost respect.” Lucid has recently promoted Jenkins to Chief Creative Officer.
“To Lucid leadership: keep people first,” Odunaiya wrote.
“The vehicles are engineering marvels, and I can’t wait to see the midsize platform and future autonomous vehicles changing the world,” he added.
Odunaiya said he was taking home “two reminders of what we built,” posting a photo of his Lucid Air and Lucid Gravity.
From Cars to AI Data Centers
IREN, formerly known as Iris Energy, is a Nasdaq-listed company founded in Sydney in 2018 that started as a bitcoin miner and has pivoted to AI cloud services.
In November 2025, it signed a five-year, $9.7 billion AI cloud contract with Microsoft for Nvidia GB300 capacity at its campus in Childress, Texas.
The company targets about 0.8 gigawatts of cumulative IT capacity by 2027, and plans “standardized layouts, modularization and prefabrication” to replicate its Sweetwater 1 design at future sites.
Midsize Delay
Odunaiya’s exit comes as Lucid prepares its third model, the midsize Cosmos crossover.
Lucid had scheduled Cosmos production to start at AMP-2 in late 2026, but pushed the start to the second half of 2027 in August.
The automaker has been cutting costs and inventory under Chief Executive Officer Silvio Napoli, who took over on June 1.
In June, Lucid said it would cut about 18% of its US workforce and eliminated the Chief Operating Officer role.
