Chip startup Olix raises $312m at $3.3bn valuation, backed by UK gov't Sovereign AI venture fund

AI chip startup Olix announced Monday it raised $312 million in a Series B financing round that values the company at $3.3 billion. The round included participation from Arm, Fundomo, Hudson River Trading, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and the UK government's Sovereign AI venture fund. The financing more than triples Olix's valuation from a $220 million Series A round in February 2026 that valued the company at $1 billion. Olix said the new capital will fund delivery of its first chip to customers in the second half of 2027 and support development of its custom silicon platform. Founder James Dacombe said the company appointed Stanford Professor Emeritus Nick McKwoen to its board and hired former Wise CFO Matt Briers as chief financial officer. The UK-based startup, founded in 2024, is building chips around a photonic interconnect designed to link specialized accelerators for AI inference. UK AI Minister Kanishka Narayan said Olix is exactly the kind of ambitious company the Sovereign AI fund wants to back. The minister said the startup has established itself as one of the UK's most exciting AI companies with breakthrough chip technology.