Cambium's new CFO sees AI as core to finance strategy
Cambium CFO Peter Coats plans to deploy artificial intelligence and automation across the company's finance operations as the sustainable wood marketplace targets rapid expansion. Coats, whose appointment was announced Aug. 25, is the San Francisco-based company's most senior finance hire to date and its first external C-suite addition.
"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.
Automation before thought work
Cambium connects wood buyers and suppliers through technology and manufactures "Smart Wood," a product line made from domestic salvaged and underutilized trees that can be traced via barcode. The company has completed five acquisitions in five years, most recently acquiring Connecticut-based General Woodcraft in July.
Coats, a structural engineer by training, previously spent six years at Google in roles including head of strategic finance, where he managed financial strategy for the "Other Bets" segment that included Waymo and Deepmind. That experience with Deepmind gave him direct exposure to bringing AI tools into finance.
In his first months at Cambium, he has asked the finance team to map out their day-to-day and month-to-month processes, separating tasks that can be automated from those that require human judgment, such as filling out bank applications. "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.
For finance professionals looking to apply similar approaches, an AI Learning Path for CFOs offers structured guidance on integrating automation into financial planning and analysis. The broader AI for Finance topic area covers practical applications for financial analysis and reporting workflows.
Building a North Star for leadership
Coats' other priority is developing what he calls a "North Star" for Cambium's leadership team: pulling together data from existing systems and delivering it in an actionable format. The company needs to build out key performance metrics, both financial and non-financial, and develop financial models that can isolate data points or external factors, such as predicting the impact of changing wood prices.
Cambium does not currently have that modeling capability. In the near term, Coats aims to allocate existing resources toward a "coherent and effective" capital strategy. The company secured an $18.5 million Series A round in 2025 led by VoLo Earth Ventures and is now lining up several lines of debt capital.
"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.
Why this matters for operations professionals
Coats' approach at Cambium shows a practical playbook for operations teams: before automating anything, map existing workflows and separate repeatable tasks from judgment-heavy work. The goal is not headcount reduction but redirecting staff time toward analysis and positioning that machines cannot do. Operations leaders facing similar scaling challenges can start by auditing which monthly processes consume the most manual effort, then target those for automation first.
Your membership also unlocks:
