James Dacombe, 25, triples AI chip start-up’s valuation to $3.3bn
British entrepreneur behind Olix raises $312mn from investors including Arm in effort to take on Nvidia
James Dacombe’s AI chip start-up Olix has raised $312mn from investors including Arm, tripling its valuation to $3.3bn in six months.
The company, founded in 2024 by the 25-year-old entrepreneur, has sought new funding in an effort to outpace the many rival start-ups vying to compete against Nvidia in the booming AI infrastructure market.
The London-based group’s new $312mn round is led by New York-based investment firm Fundomo, alongside SoftBank-backed Arm, quant firm Hudson River Trading and Netflix’s co-founder Reed Hastings.
The deal values Olix at $3.3bn, including the fresh capital raised, up from just over $1bn in February when the start-up raised $220mn.
Dacombe told the FT that the era of a single Nvidia chip handling every AI task was over, arguing “we are moving into a world of specialisation”.
“Today, where there is such an economic prize from being able to run very large powerful [large language models] fast and to a large number of users at a low cost, it really pays to disaggregate and have custom silicon that is good at that.”
Dacombe also serves as chief executive of brain-monitoring start-up CoMind, which he founded as a teenager and has raised about $100mn.
Wall Street anxiety about the scale of increasingly debt-fuelled AI infrastructure spending has triggered a sell-off in chipmakers and memory companies in recent weeks. But private investors continue to pour capital into chip start-ups that promise to unlock faster or more efficient ways of serving AI systems to customers.
Olix’s chip designs do not rely on some of the semiconductor components currently in shortest supply, such as leading-edge silicon, high-bandwidth memory or advanced packaging.
Alongside the funding, Olix has appointed Matt Briers, former chief financial officer at UK fintech Wise, as its CFO.
Olix employs more than 140 staff across its offices in London, Bristol, Toronto and Austin, with many hires joining from US Big Tech groups and semiconductor companies.
It plans to “tape out” its chips later this year, the final stage of the design and testing process before moving to manufacturing. It expects to deliver its first products to customers next year.
Dacombe told the FT that since its last financing, it had “accelerated significantly” in the development of its chips, which it plans to sell as part of a server rack that also includes software and networking equipment.
“The velocity and culture of delivering when you say you will deliver is really key,” he said. “We are on track to be the fastest company to go from founding to full chip tape out of any company in this space.”
It has made extensive use of AI tools to accelerate development of components such as the compiler that enables AI software to run on its chips. Completing that compiler was a crucial proof point for investors in the latest round.
Speed is vital if Olix is to beat its better-funded rivals to market and meet huge demand from prospective customers at a time when cash is flooding into the market for Nvidia alternatives.
Bristol-based Fractile raised $220mn in May. In July, US start-up Etched closed a $300mn round at a $10.3bn valuation from investors including Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz, while SambaNova raised $1bn at an $11bn valuation led by General Atlantic.
Olix’s biggest differentiator is its use of “photonic interconnect”, which uses lasers to move data between large clusters of chips faster and with greater energy efficiency.