Dave Wehner, Meta's chief strategy officer and former chief financial officer, is leaving the company to join Fireworks, the Lin Qiao-led AI infrastructure startup, as its new CFO. Wehner joined Facebook in 2012, served as CFO from 2014 to 2022, and then moved into the chief strategy officer role.

He announced the move on X, writing that 'Fireworks has the right mission for the moment' and that he had become 'increasingly bullish on what they are building.'

The startup, founded in 2022 by former Meta and Google employees, provides AI inference and model-training services built around open-source AI models.

The move is striking because Fireworks, at a $17.5 billion valuation from its July Series D round, remains far smaller than Meta, whose market capitalisation was about $1.56 trillion at Friday's close.

In his X post, Wehner said companies will use AI to build on their data and expertise, that specialized intelligence lets them 'own their alpha,' and that open models offer price points allowing the greatest impact.

Fireworks CEO Lin Qiao wrote on LinkedIn that Dave told her he wanted to get back to a smaller company where he could build toward a big impact again, seeing AI as the defining technology shift of his lifetime.

At Fireworks, Wehner will oversee the company's finances and operations as it scales in an increasingly competitive AI market against rivals such as OpenAI, Anthropic and major cloud providers.

The Times of India reports that Fireworks counts Nvidia and Sequoia Capital among its investors and has reportedly held early discussions for another funding round that could value the startup between $30 billion and $40 billion.

The Tech Buzz adds that Fireworks positions itself as a picks-and-shovels provider for the generative AI boom, offering inference infrastructure with speed and cost optimization that appeals to enterprises watching AI bills spiral.

Meta COO Javier Olivan praised Wehner's 14 years, saying in a statement to CNBC that he helped guide the company through 'tremendous growth and complexity' while bringing disciplined thinking to key strategic decisions.

The Tech Buzz argues the hire signals Fireworks may be preparing for a major liquidity event, noting companies do not hire a CFO who managed earnings for a trillion-dollar firm unless facing public-market scrutiny is planned.

Fireworks has also navigated growth pains: in October it disclosed a security incident involving unauthorised use of internal credentials, saying its investigation found no evidence of unauthorised access to customer models, datasets, training data or personal information.