Cambium CFO Peter Coats aims to create a “North Star” for his C-suite colleagues by deploying artificial intelligence to build key performance metrics and strengthen other aspects of the company’s finance operations, he said.
The San Francisco-based Cambium, a business looking to create a more sustainable marketplace for the wood industry, announced Coats’ appointment to its top finance seat on Aug. 25. The move is the company’s most senior finance hire to date and its first external C-suite hire, according to the press release.
“A key aspect of our strategy is to deploy new technology, AI, automation, in an industry that's ancient, and that that applies to the back office as well,” Coats told CFO Dive in an interview.
Making space for thought work
Cambium uses technology to better connect wood buyers and suppliers, and manufactures “Smart Wood”— a product line made from domestic salvaged and underutilized trees that can be traced via barcode. Coats is joining Cambium as the business targets “rapid expansion” of its platform, according to the press release.
His hiring comes shortly after the company announced it had acquired Connecticut-based woods product company General Woodcraft in July — its fifth acquisition in five years, according to a press release at the time.
As he settles into the top finance seat, Coats identified several top priorities on his to-do list, including bringing technology further into the finance team’s workflow.
“What I'd like to do is really build out a lot of the automation tools and deploy AI in ways that make our job a lot more fruitful and effective, in pursuing the fundraising as well as other FP&A activities that we need to focus on,” he said.
A structural engineer by training, he left the field to pursue finance “really with the aim toward…using my analytical skills to drive impact for an organization that was doing well by the world,” he said.
Coats previously spent six years at Google in roles including head of strategic finance, where he managed financial strategy and planning for its “Other Bets” segment, including Waymo and Deepmind. His past experience also includes stints at Goldman Sachs and Wildcat Discovery Technologies, and he is joining Cambium after serving as CFO and co-founder of an unnamed startup in stealth, “focused on building financial infrastructure for the building materials industry,” according to the press release.
His time working with Deepmind at Google means he is fairly familiar with bringing AI tools into finance, and he is working to find the right balance between tech and talent in his first few months at Cambium. He has asked the team to figure out their day-to-day or month-to-month processes, and differentiate the tasks that can be automated from those that must be conducted by employees, such as filling out bank applications, he said.
“What I’d really love is for everyone to be spending as much time as they can on what I think of as thought work,” Coats said. “Part of that thought work is building out the automated tools and maintaining those automated workflows, but some of it is really important analysis and positioning for the company.”
Building out the North Star
Another of Coats’ top areas of focus as Cambium’s CFO is “building the North Star for Cambium leadership,” developing the tools needed so the company can execute on its ambitious strategy, he said. That entails using existing systems and resources and “pulling the data together that we already have flowing through our plumbing and delivering it in a way that's actionable,” he said.
For example, the business needs to further develop key performance metrics, both financial and non-financial, Coats said, and build out financial models so Cambium can isolate data points or external factors that could benefit the company, such as predicting the impact of changing wood prices. The company currently does not have that capability.
In the near-term, Coats aims to allocate the resources Cambium already has to ensure the business can achieve its goals, pointing to developing a “coherent and effective” capital strategy as an essential, he said.
Cambium secured an $18.5 million Series A funding round in 2025 led by VoLo Earth Ventures, according to a press release at the time. The company is working on lining up several different lines of debt capital, Coats said.
“One of my priorities is really just focusing on framing the value proposition that exists in a way that's digestible for investors,” he said.
Coats has been heartened by the enthusiasm shown by existing investors he has spoken to and has faith that the business will continue to receive support, he said.
