UK AI chip startup Olix raises $312M at $3.3bn valuation

Olix was founded in London in 2024 by James Dacombe, reported to be 25, who previously worked on brain monitoring technology and is also chief executive of CoMind. The company designs its own chips, lasers and the network connecting them, and argues that the industry's reliance on general-purpose processors for AI inference is approaching its efficiency limits.

Dacombe has described an AI inference data center as a factory that produces tokens, with each token requiring hundreds of distinct operations that are typically run through the same chip. Olix's approach, called X-1, distributes a model's workload across multiple specialized chips that communicate using light rather than copper wiring, which the company says reduces latency and power consumption. Its first chip, DX-1, handles the decode stage. The firm positions its technology as a challenge to Nvidia's dominance in AI hardware.

Alongside the round, Olix appointed former Wise finance chief Matt Briers as chief financial officer. It also named Nick McKeown, a Stanford computer science professor, winner of the 2025 Marconi Prize and a former Intel executive, to its board of directors. Tech.eu reported that the company plans to bring its first products to customers next year.

During the US midterm elections, voters in multiple counties backed measures to restrict or ban data center development, with Ohio seeing some of the strongest pushback.