London-based AI chip designer OLIX has closed a €270.5m ($312m) Series B at a €2.8bn ($3.3bn) valuation just two years after it was founded, with Arm, Hudson River Trading and Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings among the backers.
OLIX was founded in 2024 to attack one of the most expensive problems in artificial intelligence: the cost and speed of inference, the stage at which trained models generate outputs. Rather than build a single general-purpose accelerator, the company is designing dedicated silicon for each step of what it calls the token-production process, alongside optical interconnects and networking hardware.
The Series B was led by Fundomo, with participation from chip designer Arm, trading firm Hudson River Trading and a group of angel investors that includes Reed Hastings. The round values the company at €2.8bn ($3.3bn), a striking figure for a business barely two years old and still ahead of first customer shipments.
The headline numbers place OLIX among the most richly valued European semiconductor start-ups to emerge in this cycle. The €270.5m cheque is unusually large for a Series B in the sector, reflecting both the capital intensity of custom silicon and the scarcity of credible challengers to the incumbents that dominate AI hardware.
Terms on ownership and dilution were not disclosed. At a €2.8bn post-money valuation, however, a raise of this size implies the new investors have taken a meaningful minority stake, with founders and early backers diluted accordingly as the cap table widens to accommodate strategic names such as Arm.
The capital will fund delivery of OLIX's first chip, the DX-1, to customers in the second half of 2027. It will also support continued development of the company's custom silicon platform, manufacturing and supply-chain commitments, and hiring across silicon, photonics, compiler and systems engineering. OLIX runs engineering operations in London, Bristol, Austin, Toronto and San Francisco.
The company has also strengthened its senior bench. Professor Nick McKeown, a networking specialist, has joined the board, while Matt Briers has been appointed chief financial officer, signalling an intent to institutionalise the business ahead of commercialisation and, potentially, later fundraising.
The bet is a bold one. OLIX is spending heavily before revenue, in a market where design cycles are long and manufacturing capacity is tightly held. Success depends on the DX-1 landing on schedule and on customers accepting specialised chips over general-purpose alternatives. For now, the raise gives one of Britain's most ambitious hardware start-ups a substantial runway and a cap table stacked with strategic weight.
Original source: Tech.eu / UKTN — https://tech.eu/2026/08/07/chip-startup-olix-raises-312m-mobilise-launches-investment-arm-and-a-deep-dive-into-july-funding/
