David Marcus, who is the head of Meta, has explained his decision to
leave. He stated that his entrepreneurial DNA had been nudging him “for too many mornings in a row to continue ignoring.”
The head of Meta’s cryptocurrency and fintech unit Novi will be stepping down from his job after 2021 ends.
Stephane Kasriel will take his place at Meta, who was the former CEO of Upwork. Meta was formerly known as Facebook and Stephane had been working here since August 2020.
Marcus announced the decision via a tweet, stating that he had made the difficult decision to leave the firm by the end of this year. The executive did not go into detail about what his next move would be but hinted that it may be something new and exciting that he builds himself.
Marcus Wants To Do Something Exciting After Leaving Meta
Marcus has worked at Meta since 2014, initially taking up a role in the firm’s messenger service branch before shifting his focus to financial services in 2018 by founding Meta’s digital wallet Novi (which also bears the same name as the fintech unit) along with co-founding the beleaguered Diem stablecoin project which now operates independently.
Marcus joins a list of former execs of the social media giant’s crypto unit who have left the firm over the past 12 months, including fellow Diem co-founders Morgan Beller and Kevin Weil who both took up new roles at NFX and Planet, respectively.
In October, a group of U.S. senators including crypto skeptic Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Facebook calling on the firm to discontinue its wallet project just hours after Novi launched a pilot in the United States and Guatemala in partnership with Coinbase.
Now that the future of Novi is in someone else’s hands, Marcus reflected on his time and said that his proudest achievement was assembling a “kickass team” over the past three years.
