Olix, the UK-based AI chip startup founded by 25-year-old James Dacombe, has raised $312m in a round led by New York-based investment firm Fundomo. Chipmaker Arm, Hudson River Trading and Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings also backed the round.
The round gives Olix a post-money valuation of $3.3bn, up from just over $1bn in February, when it raised $220m from Hummingbird Ventures, Plural, LocalGlobe and Entrepreneurs First.
Olix is aiming to produce AI chips that are faster and cheaper than Nvidia’s, the US company that currently dominates chip supply. Olix is Dacombe’s second company, he previously founded brain monitoring startup CoMind in 2018.
Olix is going after opportunities in the booming AI infrastructure market, which has seen investors pour money into startups working across the chip market, on physical data centres, the infrastructure to run them and new types of chips promising to outgun incumbents.
Other European chip startups which have raised recently include Dutch semiconductor startup Axelera, which raised more than $250m in February, and UK-based Fractile, which is building chips for inference and which raised $220m in May.
Despite the enthusiasm from private market investors, publicly listed chip stocks have been jittery across the last few months, as investors price in concern about the scale of debt funding going into the AI infrastructure buildout. Global chip stocks shed billions following reports that a Chinese company has started mass-producing chipmaking machines, something some European startup investors think could be good for the continent.
Olix’s chips don’t rely on some of the semiconductor components currently in shortest supply, such as leading-edge silicon, high-bandwidth memory and advanced packaging, the Financial Times reported.
As well as the funding round, Olix has also hired Matt Briers, former chief financial officer at UK fintech Wise, as its CFO.
The company plans to tape out its chips later this year, which is the final stage of chip design and testing before a chipmaker begins manufacturing. First products are expected to be in customer hands next year.
