Fireworks AI Names Former Meta Finance Chief Dave Wehner as CFO at $17.5 Billion Startup

Dave Wehner, Meta's chief strategy officer and its CFO from 2014 to 2022, is leaving the company to become chief financial officer of Fireworks AI, the AI inference startup valued at $17.5 billion. Wehner announced the move on X on Friday, Crypto Briefing reported.

Wehner's Move From Meta to Fireworks AI

Wehner joined Meta in 2012 and took over as CFO in 2014, holding that role until 2022, when he moved into the chief strategy officer seat. He stayed there until this month. Fireworks AI CEO Lin Qiao told CNBC in a statement that Wehner will be responsible for scaling the startup's finances and operations.

The hire has a reunion quality. Fireworks AI was founded in 2022 by former Meta engineers, and Qiao previously led Meta's PyTorch team, which built one of the most widely used frameworks for developing machine learning models. Fireworks AI trains and serves open-source AI models for enterprise use, letting businesses customize open models with their own proprietary data. The company processes more than 40 trillion tokens every day, with most of that traffic coming from models its clients have customized, and its customer list includes Uber, Shopify and Doximity.

Meta has not lost a sitting CFO, since Wehner had already moved into the strategy role, but it does lose a figure with deep institutional knowledge, Crypto Briefing reported. Meta is rolling out specialized models for Muse and Meta AI that bring Active Memory and Active Focus to all users, according to Runtimewire.

Fireworks AI's Funding and Revenue Records

Fireworks AI's July 2026 Series D raised $1.5 billion led by Atreides Management, Index Ventures and TCV, according to akta.pro company records. The same records show seven funding rounds on file and total funding of $1.8 billion at the Series D stage, with the last round dated July 15, 2026. The records list a $15 billion valuation under discussion in May 2026, before the round closed at $17.5 billion post-money.

Deals Preceding the CFO Appointment

Fireworks AI leased 5MW of direct-liquid-cooled capacity powered by Nvidia Blackwell Ultra GPUs at Era4's data center in Chesterfield, UK, Datacenterdynamics reported in November 2026. In October 2026, Forum Edge AI, a joint venture of Forum Markets and Edge Node, signed a 36-month agreement with Fireworks to reserve Nvidia B300 GPU capacity at its Dallas data center, Stock Titan reported. Also in October 2026, Zeta Global announced a collaboration with Fireworks to develop the Athena Inference Model, a collection of specialized open-weight models powered by NVIDIA Nemotron, FinancialContent Business Page reported.

Fireworks AI's Series D Terms

Fireworks AI's July 2026 round raised $1.505 billion and valued the company at $17.5 billion on a post-money basis, meaning the valuation includes the fresh cash from the round. By mid-2026, Fireworks AI hit a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate, climbing from $100 million in annualized revenue in approximately 16 months.