Dave Wehner, Meta's chief strategy officer and its CFO from 2014 to 2022, is leaving to become CFO of AI startup Fireworks. The startup was valued at $17.5 billion in a July funding round.
Dave Wehner is leaving Meta for four-year-old AI startup Fireworks, where he will take the CFO role. Wehner, who most recently served as Meta's chief strategy officer, announced the move on X on Friday.
Wehner's task at Fireworks
Fireworks CEO Lin Qiao told CNBC in a statement that Wehner will be tasked with scaling the company's finances and operations. In a LinkedIn post, Qiao said Wehner wanted to get back to a smaller company.
Wehner joined Meta, then called Facebook, in 2012 and served as its chief financial officer from 2014 to 2022. Meta COO Javier Olivan said in a statement to CNBC: "Dave helped guide Meta through tremendous growth and complexity over 14 years".
What Fireworks does and how it is funded
Fireworks is an AI inference and model-training platform that lets developers customize and run open models for their businesses. It was founded in 2022 by former Meta and Google employees.
The company was valued at $17.5 billion in a July Series D round led by Atreides Management, Index Ventures and TCV. Business Insider reported that Fireworks is in early talks to raise again at a possible $30 billion to $40 billion valuation.
Crypto Briefing reported that Fireworks raised $1.505 billion in that Series D and reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate by mid-2026.
Meta's scale compared with Fireworks
Fireworks is notably smaller than Meta, which had about a $1.56 trillion market capitalization as of Friday's close. Its competitors include OpenAI and Anthropic.
Sources: CNBC, Crypto Briefing
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