UK AI Chip Startup OLIX Secures £232M in Series B Funding

OLIX, the UK-based AI hardware company founded in 2024, has secured $312 million (£232m) in its Series B round and also achieved a $3.3 billion (£2.45bn) valuation.

The startup is developing the next-generation of AI chips that are faster, cheaper, and more energy-efficient than current AI chips. Known as “inference chips,” these are being designed specifically with AI in mind, with each specialising in a particular part of an AI model’s “thinking” process.

The financing funds the route to delivering its DX-1 chip, which is designed for the stage at which an AI model reasons and generates its output, to OLIX’s first customers by the second half of 2027.

Further, the investment will go towards the build-out of the wider custom silicon platform behind it, with the manufacturing and supply chain commitments that frontier inference hardware requires.

OLIX’s latest round of funding included investors such as Arm, Hudson River Trading, Fundomo, the UK Government’s Sovereign AI venture fund, Reed Hastings—the co-founder of Netflix—as well as existing investors all increasing their commitments.

Speaking on the startup and why the UK Government invested in it through the Sovereign AI fund, AI Minister Kanishka Narayan said: “The future of AI will be built on chips that power models. Countries that build chips will build leverage.

“OLIX is exactly the kind of ambitious company we want to back through Sovereign AI. In just two years, it has established itself as one of the UK’s most exciting AI startups, developing breakthrough chip technology with the potential to help shape the future of AI.

“If we want Britain to lead in AI, we need to back the technologies that sit underneath it. That’s how we’ll attract investment, create high-skilled jobs and ensure the UK remains a country that builds the future of AI, not just uses it.”

On top of the new funding and valuation, the startup also confirmed today that it has appointed Matt Briers, who was CFO of Wise for nine years, as the company’s Chief Financial Officer.

Additionally, Professor Nick McKeown—cited as a defining figure of modern networking, and co-inventor of software-defined networking, OpenFlow, and P4—has been appointed to its board of directors.