Winer Leaves Meta for Fireworks After Annual Revenue Tops $1 Billion
Key Facts
Dave Winer is leaving his role as Meta’s chief strategy officer to become chief financial officer at startup Fireworks, according to a report published by The Information on November 6, 2026. Winer confirmed the move on X, the report said, describing Fireworks as a startup specializing in AI inference. The move puts a former Meta finance and strategy executive at the helm of the finances of an AI infrastructure company. Fireworks said in July that its annualized revenue run rate had topped $1 billion, growing fivefold year over year since its previous funding round. On the day the report was published, Meta shares closed at $610.15, compared with $605.08 in the previous session; available data do not link the move announcement to that price change.
Winer has prior finance leadership experience at Meta; he served as CFO from 2014 for more than eight years before moving into the chief strategy officer role in 2022, according to The Information. Meta’s filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said Winer informed the company on July 24, 2022, of his decision to move from finance to strategy, with the change to take effect on November 1 of that year. In the same filing, the company said its board expected to appoint Susan Li as CFO effective on that date; she was then vice president of finance. This provides context for Winer’s path from finance to strategy and then back to a finance role at another company. Fireworks describes its platform as bringing together inference tools, model orchestration and open-model training.
Fireworks expanded its funding and valuation over one year; in October 2025, it announced a $250 million Series C round at a $4 billion valuation and said its total funding reached $327 million after the round. In July 2026, it announced a $1.505 billion Series D round at a $17.5 billion valuation. The move from the previous round to the latest one reflects a substantial increase in the announced funding and valuation, while these figures remain based on company announcements. Fireworks announced the latest round alongside its July disclosure that its annualized revenue run rate had topped $1 billion, saying the run rate had grown fivefold year over year since its previous funding round. The company links its expansion to increased use of its platform and demand for model customization.
Fireworks said its platform was serving more than 10 trillion tokens a day for more than 10,000 customers during 2025. In its July 2026 announcement, it said daily token volume served had risen from 15 trillion to more than 40 trillion in the period leading up to the announcement, and that 95% of the tokens it serves come from customized models. The company describes its platform as enabling training and inference for open models, with customization using customer data. According to Fireworks’ disclosure, the share of specialized models indicates that most of the usage it reports is tied to modified models. The customer, token and revenue figures in its announcements describe the company’s growth as reported by the company itself.
Fireworks said the July funding would support expansion of its engineering team, global computing capacity and deeper partnerships with cloud partners, including Microsoft and NVIDIA. When it announced its Series C round in October 2025, the company said the funding would be used for global expansion and investment in algorithms, model quality, software infrastructure and developer tools, as well as hiring in engineering, product and commercial growth. These plans place computing capacity and developer-tool development among the areas the company said it would direct funding toward. Winer’s move to the CFO role comes as Fireworks announces a larger funding round and higher usage and revenue metrics than it had reported in 2025. For Meta, EL7 data show the stock closed at $610.15 on November 6, compared with $605.08 on November 5, without establishing a link between the price change and news of Winer’s move.