Meta’s Dave Wehner Leaves to Become CFO of AI Startup Fireworks
In one of the year’s most high-profile executive moves, Dave Wehner, Meta’s chief strategy officer and former longtime CFO, announced on November 7, 2026, that he is leaving the social media giant to become chief financial officer of Fireworks, a fast-growing AI infrastructure startup.
Founded in 2022 by former Meta and Google employees, Fireworks operates an AI inference and model-training platform that helps businesses customize and deploy open AI models at scale. Its clients include Cursor, Perplexity, and Uber.
The startup was valued at $17.5 billion during a Series D fundraising round in July 2026. Investors included Nvidia, Sequoia Capital, Atreides Management, Index Ventures, and TCV.
Wehner joined Meta, then known as Facebook, in 2012 and served as its CFO from 2014 to 2022 before moving into the chief strategy role. At Fireworks, he will help scale the company’s finances and operations, according to CEO Lin Qiao.
“He sees AI as the defining technology shift of his lifetime and wants to help shape what comes next,” Lin wrote in a LinkedIn post.
Meta COO Javier Olivan praised Wehner for guiding the company “through tremendous growth and complexity over 14 years.” Wehner’s departure is widely seen as a sign of the growing pull AI startups are exerting on seasoned Silicon Valley executives.