Paul Humphries

Former Chief Executive Officer Our Next Energy (ONE)

Last Reviewed: September 18, 2026

Executive Summary

Paul Humphries is a career manufacturing executive who spent fifteen months running Our Next Energy, the Michigan lithium-ion battery company, through the hardest stretch of its life. He came to the job in December 2023 from ONE’s own board, on which he had sat since the company’s founding in 2020, at a moment when the business had run short of cash and had to cut spending and headcount while simultaneously converting a research operation into a factory. His background was exactly the one that problem called for: four decades in large-scale manufacturing and operations, ending as Group President of Flex Ltd.’s roughly $11 billion High Reliability Solutions division. He got the Aries LFP pack into production, and retired in March 2025, handing the company back to its founder.

Career Highlights

• Chief Executive Officer of Our Next Energy from 10 December 2023 until his retirement in March 2025.
• Took ONE from research and development into manufacturing, launching the Aries LFP battery pack into production during his tenure.
• Managed the company through a liquidity crisis that required spending cuts and workforce reductions.
• Founding member of ONE’s board of directors from the company’s establishment in 2020.
• Group President of Flex Ltd.’s High Reliability Solutions division, an approximately $11 billion business spanning automotive, industrial, energy and medical markets.
• Corporate Chief Innovation Officer of Flex Ltd., a company of roughly $30 billion in revenue.
• Retired from Flex in 2021 after more than 40 years in manufacturing and operations.

Professional Journey

Humphries spent his career in contract manufacturing and operations, the discipline of building other companies’ products at volume and to tolerance. The summit of it was Flex Ltd., the global contract manufacturer, where he served as Corporate Chief Innovation Officer and then as Group President of High Reliability Solutions - the division handling the segments where failure is least acceptable: automotive, industrial, energy and medical devices. It was a business of roughly $11 billion inside a company of about $30 billion. He retired from Flex in 2021, with more than forty years in the industry behind him.

Retirement did not last. He had been a founding member of the board of Our Next Energy since Mujeeb Ijaz established the company in 2020, and ONE was by late 2023 in serious difficulty. It had become a prominent example of American battery manufacturing ambition - it had federal and state political backing and a gigafactory in Van Buren Township - but it had run into a liquidity crisis while still transitioning out of research. On 10 December 2023 the board installed Humphries as chief executive in place of Ijaz, who moved to vice-chairman and chief technology officer to lead product engineering, with fellow founding director Faysal Sohail becoming chairman.

The remit was narrow and unromantic: stop the cash burn, right-size the workforce, and get product out of the building. Humphries framed the underlying case for continuing at all in terms of demand rather than technology, arguing that there remained a real need for a US battery manufacturer producing domestically made cells with greater range, higher energy density and abundant materials. Pilot production of LFP cells had begun at the Michigan gigafactory in October 2023, two months before he took over, and during his tenure the Aries LFP pack reached production - the achievement ONE itself credited him with on his departure.

He retired in March 2025. ONE announced the change on 6 March alongside a new funding round led by Crescent Ventures, with Trousdale Ventures and Ivanhoe Capital Holdings participating, and with Mansoor Ijaz and former Volkswagen Group North America chief executive Hinrich Woebcken joining the board. Mujeeb Ijaz returned to the chief executive’s role he had vacated fifteen months earlier. No continuing role for Humphries was announced, and none has been identified since.

Education

No education could be established for Paul Humphries. Our Next Energy’s announcements about him give none, and no other source consulted states a degree or institution.