Olix Raises $312 Million, Tripling Valuation to $3.3 Billion in 6 Months
Updated
Updated · Financial Times · Aug 3
Olix Raises $312 Million, Tripling Valuation to $3.3 Billion in 6 Months
3 articles · Updated · Financial Times · Aug 3
Summary
$312 million in new funding values London-based AI chip startup Olix at $3.3 billion, up from just over $1 billion when it raised $220 million in February.
Fundomo led the round, with Arm, Hudson River Trading and Reed Hastings participating, as Olix seeks to move faster than other Nvidia challengers in AI infrastructure.
Olix says its designs avoid some of the scarcest semiconductor inputs and use photonic interconnects—lasers linking chip clusters—to improve speed and energy efficiency.
More than 140 staff across London, Bristol, Toronto and Austin are working toward a chip tape-out later this year, with first customer deliveries targeted for 2027.
The raise comes despite a recent public-market sell-off in chip stocks, underscoring continued private investor appetite for AI hardware startups promising cheaper, faster model serving.
Why are investors pouring $312 million into Olix’s bottleneck-avoiding AI hardware as HBM and packaging shortages reshape the chip race?
Is the next AI winner the fastest chip, or the company that makes inference dramatically cheaper with optics, specialized silicon, and rack-scale design?