Meta chief strategy officer Dave Wehner to join AI startup Fireworks
Wehner will serve as chief financial officer for the four-year-old company led by Lin Qiao.
Meta chief strategy officer Dave Wehner is leaving the social media giant to join the artificial intelligence (AI) startup Fireworks as its new chief financial officer (CFO), according to the Times of India.
Wehner, who joined the company in 2012 and served as chief financial officer from 2014 to 2022, announced the move on X. He stated he has become increasingly bullish on what Fireworks is building and noted the company has the right mission for the moment.
Fireworks, which provides AI inference and model-training services for open-source models, was valued at $17.5 billion in a July funding round. The company was founded in 2022 by former Meta and Google employees and is backed by investors including Nvidia and Sequoia Capital.
Fireworks CEO Lin Qiao said Wehner's experience would assist the company during its next stage of expansion. Qiao added that Wehner wanted to return to a smaller company to build toward a big impact and views AI as a defining technology shift.
Meta chief operating officer (COO) Javier Olivan praised Wehner for helping guide the company through growth and complexity over the past 14 years. Wehner expressed gratitude to Mark Zuckerberg and said he remains optimistic about the future of Meta.
The startup has reportedly held early discussions for a funding round that could value the company between $30 billion and $40 billion.