Olix

Semiconductors · AI Chips · Hardware

Funding

UK chip startup Olix raises $312M Series B at $3.3B valuation

The company's valuation tripled in under six months, a sign investors are betting big on alternatives to Nvidia's chip dominance.

• Olix, a London-based AI chip startup, raised a $312M Series B led by New York investment firm Fundomo, valuing the company at $3.3B.
• Founded in 2024 by 25-year-old James Dacombe, who previously built brain-monitoring startup CoMind, Olix designs optical inference chips meant to be faster and cheaper than Nvidia's GPUs.
• The round drew backing from chipmaker Arm, trading firm Hudson River Trading, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, and the UK government's Sovereign AI fund.
• The $3.3B valuation is roughly triple the just-over-$1B mark Olix hit in February 2026, when it raised $220M from Hummingbird Ventures, Plural, LocalGlobe and Entrepreneurs First.
• Olix's chips use photonic interconnects instead of high-bandwidth memory to sidestep the supply bottlenecks that constrain Nvidia's stack, with first commercial products expected in 2027.
• The mega-round shows private investors keep funneling capital into Nvidia alternatives even as public chip stocks grow jittery over AI infrastructure debt.