Dave Wehner ran Meta's finance team for eight years1. He then led its strategy desk for four more. This week he left for Fireworks, a startup that rents out computing time for other firms' AI models. Fal, a rival in the same business, joined him in the headlines.
Money and talent moved toward the firms that run AI day to day, past the labs that only build it. Ten stories this week carried that shift. Each names who moved, who paid, or who built a way to stop an agent mid-task. One hedge fund boss still doubts the whole trade.
Meta's Finance Chief Picks a Smaller Firm
Dave Wehner left a trillion-dollar firm for a much smaller one1. Fireworks CEO Lin Qiao posted her reason in her own words. "Dave told me he wanted to get back to a smaller company where he could build toward a big impact again. He sees AI as the defining technology shift of his lifetime and wants to help shape what comes next," she wrote. Wehner called the move a bet on a mission instead of size.
Anthropic Buys Its Own Power Plant
One AI lab just made the largest known purchase of power gear on record2. Anthropic agreed this week to pay $3.4 billion for gas-fired generators. The deal buys 1.7 gigawatts of capacity from OnePWR Solutions, after Anthropic took over its own Caterpillar orders. Clean power still arrives too slowly for its new data centers, so gas fills the gap for now.
Fal Doubles Its Price Tag in Seven Months
Demand outran Fal's own compute over the hot summer months3. "We hit a point in summer where we were not able to serve our customers and had to rate-limit them," Fal CEO Burkay Gur said. Investors answered fast with a new $16 billion valuation. That doubles the $8 billion mark Fal held in April, at 20 times its revenue12.
Fal's price climbed fast before this round too: $1.5 billion in July 2025, then $4.5 billion that December312.
Fal's valuation doubles again, to $16 billion in seven months
Fal's valuation at each funding round, July 2025 to November 2026
The line follows Fal's valuation at each round; it doubled from April to November after demand outran the compute Fal had on hand.
Sources: Bloomberg [3]; TechFundingNews [12]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Period | Value |
|---|---|
| Jul. 2025 | $1.5B |
| Dec. 2025 | $4.5B |
| Apr. 2026 | $8B |
| Nov. 2026 | $16B |
Citadel founder Ken Griffin still calls the broader trade a darker story. "Corporate America has been very uneven in its ability to extract value from its AI models. Any radical transformation of our economy is generally intertwined with a bubble. The companies that survive them become market leaders for decades to come," Griffin said last month11. He still expects a few winners to last for years. Fireworks trades near 17.5 times revenue, well above Together AI's 7.2 times on its bookings31213.
Fal's valuation runs 20 times its revenue, nearly triple Together AI's multiple
Valuation divided by each company's most recent annualized revenue or bookings figure
Each bar is one company's valuation divided by its own revenue or bookings; a taller bar means investors pay more for each dollar that company already earns.
Together AI's figure counts annualized bookings, a different measure than Fal's and Fireworks' recognized revenue, so treat the comparison as rough.
Sources: Bloomberg [3]; TechFundingNews [12]; CNBC [13]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Fal | 20x |
| Fireworks | 17.5x |
| Together AI | 7.2x |
Korea's Chips Get Wired Into Nvidia's Network
Three firms will link Korean chips to Nvidia's own network, starting in 20284. Rebellions will connect its new R200 chips through NVLink Fusion, and SK Telecom will run those systems. "Korea has the talent, technology and industrial ambition to become a world leader in AI," Nvidia founder Jensen Huang said. Seoul's science ministry is backing the plan.
A Bug Hunter Gets OpenAI's Cyber Model
One security firm that once broke into ChatGPT accounts now works for OpenAI5. Hacktron once chained a forum bug with a login flaw to take over those accounts. OpenAI is opening up more of GPT-6 Cyber to Hacktron, so the firm can test its outside links. "OpenAI is setting a strong example by putting frontier cyber models in the hands of security researchers, enabling them to uncover complex vulnerabilities at the boundaries between interconnected systems," Hacktron CEO Zayne Zhang said.
FlashProve Settles Which Model Answered
Anthropic released a new tool called FlashProve, built together with EPFL, MIT and StarkWare6. The tool proves one specific model produced one specific reply. A check runs on an ordinary computer in about 20 seconds, though making the proof costs far more compute than the reply itself. Regulators or a rival lab could use it to check which model actually served a customer.
Thinking Machines Ships 594 Billion Parameters
Mira Murati's lab built a model that reads images and adjusts its reasoning effort7. Thinking Machines released Inkling 2 Small. The model holds 594 billion total parameters, though it uses only 17 billion at a time. Thinking Machines promised full weights under an Apache 2.0 license once outside safety testing finishes.
A Retailer Opens Its Checkout to Other Companies' Agents
Walmart will roll out its new Agent Profiles tool in November8. Shoppers will set their own spending limits for AI agents that buy on their behalf. The new feature links ChatGPT, Gemini and Muse to Walmart's own store inventory. Amazon still blocks outside shopping agents from its own checkout instead.
CrowdStrike Builds a Switch to Stop an Agent
Security teams can now shut down a rogue AI agent with one action9. CrowdStrike's Falcon Guardian cuts the agent's network access and keeps it from starting again. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz framed the tool as the price of trust. "AI safety is how you get the full benefit of AI. When you deploy agents with a kill switch, you stay in control," Kurtz said.
Publishers Press AI Companies to Pay for the Work
Deutsche Welle director general Barbara Massing told a Berlin media forum: "AI companies draw on our quality reporting to generate answers, yet the reporting itself often remains largely invisible by the end of this process. AI systems shouldn't just use quality journalism. They should also pay for it," she said10. Julia Becker, publisher of Funke Media Group, recalled the old deal with search: "In the past, search engines like Google indexed our websites and directed users to their articles, generating traffic in return. But now that exchange has broken down," she said. Martin Senftleben, a copyright scholar, proposed a required payment, modeled on music royalties, for every chatbot answer that uses news.
What to watch
Watch whether Fireworks' own valuation talks close near the reported $30 billion to $40 billion range. A close that high would back Wehner's own bet with a real number. Watch the next inference startup that reports its own numbers soon, too. That report will back either Griffin's bubble call or Gur's own view instead.
Sources
- CNBC Staff, "Meta chief strategy officer Dave Wehner leaves to join AI infrastructure startup Fireworks as CFO," CNBC, Nov. 7, 2026, https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/07/dave-wehner-meta-fireworks-cfo.html
- Bloomberg News, "Anthropic Buys Power for AI Data Centers in $3.4B Deal, FT Says," Bloomberg, Nov. 8, 2026, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-11-08/anthropic-buys-power-for-ai-data-centres-in-3-4b-deal-ft-says
- Bloomberg News, "AI Inference Startup Fal Raises Capital at $16 Billion Valuation," Bloomberg, Nov. 3, 2026, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-11-03/ai-inference-startup-fal-raises-capital-at-16-billion-valuation
- Nvidia, "NVIDIA, Rebellions and SK Telecom Announce Collaboration to Advance Sovereign AI Infrastructure With NVIDIA NVLink Fusion," Nvidia Newsroom, Nov. 8, 2026, https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-rebellions-and-sk-telecom-announce-collaboration-to-advance-sovereign-ai-infrastructure-with-nvidia-nvlink-fusion
- Hacktron, "Partnering with OpenAI," Hacktron, Nov. 6, 2026, https://www.hacktron.ai/blog/openai-partnership
- Help Net Security Staff, "Anthropic open-sources FlashProve, its provable inference prototype for MoE models," Help Net Security, Nov. 4, 2026, https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2026/11/04/anthropic-flashprove-provable-inference/
- Dataconomy Staff, "Thinking Machines Unveils 594B-parameter Inkling 2 Small AI Model," Dataconomy, Nov. 6, 2026, https://dataconomy.com/2026/11/06/thinking-machines-unveils-594b-parameter-inkling-2-small/
- TechCrunch Staff, "While Amazon blocks AI agents, Walmart rolls out the welcome mat," TechCrunch, Oct. 21, 2026, https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/21/while-amazon-blocks-ai-agents-walmart-rolls-out-the-welcome-mat/
- CrowdStrike, "CrowdStrike Introduces the AI Kill Switch for AI Safety," CrowdStrike, Nov. 3, 2026, https://www.crowdstrike.com/en-us/press-releases/crowdstrike-introduces-ai-kill-switch-for-ai-safety/
- Deutsche Welle, "Should AI Companies Pay for the Journalism They Use?," Tempo.co, Nov. 8, 2026, https://en.tempo.co/read/2123254/should-ai-companies-pay-for-the-journalism-they-use
- Yahoo Finance Staff, "Ken Griffin: There Are 'Almost Certainly Bubbles' in AI Right Now," Yahoo Finance, Oct. 21, 2026, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ken-griffin-almost-certainly-bubbles-122850413.html
- TechFundingNews Staff, "Together AI raises $800M at $8.3B valuation as enterprises ditch closed models for open-source," TechFundingNews, Jul. 1, 2026, https://techfundingnews.com/together-ai-raises-800m-at-8-3b-valuation-as-enterprises-ditch-closed-models-for-open-source/
- CNBC Staff, "Nvidia-backed Fireworks hits $17.5 billion valuation as companies pursue cheaper AI models," CNBC, Jul. 16, 2026, https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/16/fireworks-nvidia-cloud-ai-startup-value.html
