Marc Tarpenning

Marc Tarpenning (born June 1, 1964) is an American engineer and technology entrepreneur who co-founded Tesla Inc. with Martin Eberhard in 2003. Tarpenning served as the chief financial officer (CFO) and vice president of engineering of Tesla.

Early life Marc Tarpenning was born in Sacramento, California, on June 1, 1964. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, and obtained a B.A. degree in computer science in 1985.

Career After graduating from Berkeley, Tarpenning spent several years working for Textron in Saudi Arabia. Tarpenning then developed software and firmware products for several companies, including Seagate Technology and Bechtel, and later served as vice president of engineering at Packet Design, a network technology company. Tarpenning continued to serve as the chief financial officer (CFO) and the Vice President of Electrical Engineering in Tesla until 2008.

After leaving Tesla, Tarpenning began to serve as an adviser or member of advisory board of several companies, including his alma mater (Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology (SCET) and SkyDeck, UC Berkeley) and Spero Ventures, a VC firm.