UK chip startup Olix has secured $312M in a Series B led by New York firm Fundomo, more than tripling its valuation to $3.3B. Arm, quantitative trading firm Hudson River Trading and Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings joined, along with the UK government’s Sovereign AI fund and earlier backers.
Founder and CEO James Dacombe, 25, launched Olix two years ago after building brain-monitoring startup CoMind. The company is developing an optical digital processor with a novel memory and interconnect architecture for AI inference, taking direct aim at Nvidia’s dominance. Its thesis: data centers running every stage of token production on one general-purpose chip have hit efficiency limits, and specialized silicon for each stage unlocks a step change in cost and performance.
Olix says its design avoids the components in shortest supply, including leading-edge silicon, high-bandwidth memory and advanced packaging. It plans to tape out its chips later this year and deliver first products in 2027, selling them as part of a server rack with bundled software and networking gear.
The company also hired Matt Briers, former CFO of fintech Wise, as chief financial officer, and added Stanford professor and ex-Intel executive Nick McKeown to its board. The proceeds fund chip commercialization, the silicon platform and manufacturing commitments.
The round reflects surging investor appetite for European chip startups chasing the AI infrastructure boom, even as listed chip stocks wobble over the debt funding the buildout requires.
