Asia Tech Wire (July 12) -- California-based artificial intelligence startup Fireworks AI recently received a valuation of $552 million in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital.

Sequoia, as well as Nvidia, AMD, MongoDB, and other investors, invested $52 million in Fireworks AI in the Series B round, bringing its total cash to $77 million, the company said in a statement.

Founded in October 2022, Fireworks AI's tools help companies fine-tune and customize models to meet specific needs, and it allows companies to access more than 100 models using its platform.

Fireworks AI said the investment will help the company drive the industry's shift to compound AI systems, expand its team, which currently has 27 employees, and enhance the platform so developers can quickly move AI applications from prototype to production.

Lin Qiao, co-founder and CEO of Fireworks AI, graduated from Fudan University in China and was previously Meta's senior director of engineering, where he was responsible for developing and deploying AI frameworks and platforms such as Caffe2 and PyTorch.