Omead Afshar: Former Tesla operations chief turns up at SpaceX in new Starship role

Omead Afshar, who led operations at Tesla Inc.'s new plant in Texas, is now at SpaceX working on Elon Musk's ambitious Starship deep-space rocket, according to people familiar with the matter.

Afshar has been named vice president: Starship production at the company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., according to two of the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information.

It's not known if he is now working at both companies.

Afshar hasn't been seen at Tesla's Austin plant for a number of weeks, two people said.

Afshar didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did representatives of SpaceX and Tesla. Musk, who has a close relationship with Afshar, also didn't respond.

Musk is chief executive officer of both electric vehicle market-leader Tesla and closely held rocket launch and satellite operator SpaceX. The two companies have significant operations in Texas, including Tesla's headquarters in Austin and SpaceX's launch site in the Gulf Coast community of Boca Chica.

As of Wednesday evening, Afshar's LinkedIn profile still listed him as working at Tesla, with the job title listed as a cowboy emoji.

Internal Scrutiny

In July, Afshar was under scrutiny in an internal investigation at Tesla for his role in a plan to purchase hard-to-get construction materials, Bloomberg reported.

Some employees were fired as part of the investigation and Afshar was expected to depart the electric-vehicle maker, people with knowledge of the matter said at the time. It wasn't clear if he was moved as a result of the investigation.

Musk has a long history of shuffling executives from one part of his empire to another, or sharing them across his companies. Charles Kuehmann is vice president of material engineering at both Tesla and SpaceX, while current Tesla engineers are now helping Musk to overhaul Twitter Inc.