James Dacombe's Olix AI Chip Startup Triples Valuation to $3.3bn in Six Months

James Dacombe, 25, triples AI chip start-up's valuation to $3.3bn

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.

A 25-year-old just tripled his London chip startup to $3.3bn, betting against Nvidia and the shortage.

Olix, founded two years ago by a 25-year-old, has tripled its valuation to $3.3bn. Its pitch is an AI chip that skips the components the rest of the industry is fighting over. A London startup two years old has just become one of Britain's boldest bets against Nvidia. Olix has raised $312m and tripled its valuation to $3.3bn in six months. Its founder, James Dacombe, is 25. And its pitch has a timely twist: a chip that skips the very parts the rest of the industry is fighting over. The New York firm Fundomo led the Series B, Sifted reported. Arm, the quant trading firm Hudson River Trading and Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings also took part. So did the UK government, through its Sovereign AI fund, which counts Olix as one of its first bets. The round values the company at more than triple its February mark of about $1bn. Dacombe's pitch is that the age of one chip doing everything is ending. The industry is "moving into a world of specialists," he told the FT. He likens an AI data centre to a factory whose product is the token. Making one token takes hundreds of operations with different hardware needs, yet every stage runs on one general-purpose chip. Olix wants to give each stage its own machine. Its X-1 platform spreads a model across several specialised chips, wired together by an optical network that moves data with light rather than copper. The first chip, DX-1, handles the stage where a model writes its output. For very large models, Olix claims it can run faster and on less power than a general-purpose part. The timely part: it dodges the shortage The detail that matters most right now is what Olix's chips leave out. The DX-1 uses no high-bandwidth memory and no advanced packaging, the company says, holding a model in fast on-chip memory instead. Those happen to be the components in shortest supply, the squeeze now pushing up prices on everything from laptops to phones. The pedigree around the founder is heavy for a company this young. Olix has put Nick McKeown, a Stanford professor who helped invent modern networking, on its board. Its new finance chief, Matt Briers, spent nine years as chief financial officer of Wise and took the fintech public. The firm now has more than 140 staff across the UK, US and Canada. Still a bet, not a product For all the momentum, Olix has not shipped a chip. It plans to finish its design later this year and reach its first customers in 2027, selling the silicon inside a full server rack. Only then will its headline performance claims be tested against real workloads, rather than a pitch deck. It is also small next to its American rivals. Etched is valued at $10.3bn and SambaNova at around $11bn, and both dwarf Olix's $3.3bn. The public markets are wary too, with chip stocks jittery over how much debt is funding the AI build-out. Investors are betting the market is big enough to carry more than a few winners. AI chips are worth roughly $84bn this year and could approach $1tn early next decade, and money keeps pouring into AI hardware. For the UK, Olix is a rare shot at owning a slice of it. Whether the silicon delivers is the only number that will settle it.

James Dacombe's AI chip startup Olix raises $312m By Investing.com

Investing.com -- AI chip startup Olix raised $312 million in a funding round led by Fundomo, the Financial Times reports. SoftBank-backed Arm, Hudson River Trading, and Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings participated in the round. The funding values the company at $3.3 billion, triple its valuation from six months ago. James Dacombe founded the startup. Olix appointed Matt Briers as its chief financial officer. Briers previously served as chief financial officer at UK fintech company Wise. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.

How school dropout James Dacombe built a $3.3B AI chip startup and became Britain's newest billionaire at 25

James Dacombe left sixth form after just two days at 16 and, less than a decade later, founded Olix, an AI chip startup valued at US$3.3 billion in its latest funding round, lifting the estimated value of his stake above $1 billion. The milestone came after London-based Olix raised £232 million ($312 million) in a funding round led by New York-based Fundomo that tripled the company's valuation to £2.5 billion ($3.3 billion) in six months. The round attracted investment from British chip designer Arm, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, Hudson River Trading and Sovereign AI, the U.K. government's investment vehicle for promising AI companies. According to an analysis of publicly available shareholding data cited by the Daily Mail, Dacombe owned more than one-third of Olix before the fundraising. At the company's latest valuation, his stake would be worth about £946 million ($1.27 billion), although his exact ownership after the funding round has not been disclosed. The funding also prompted congratulatory messages from his family. His mother, Jane, a freshwater ecologist at the Environment Agency, commented on LinkedIn: "An alchemy of your vision and drive together with an amazing team. So very proud of you," according to The Times. His sister Martha, who studied at the University of Cambridge and now works at a think tank, wrote: "Huge congrats! Very proud of you". Walking away from school Raised in Harrogate, northern England, Dacombe began teaching himself computer programming at 13, building websites and applications while still in school. Unlike his sisters, who went on to study at the University of Cambridge and the London School of Economics, he chose a different path. After leaving Ashville College in 2017, Dacombe enrolled at St Aidan's and St John Fisher Sixth Form College but dropped out after just two days. The following year, at 17, he founded CoMind, a medical technology startup developing non-invasive devices to monitor blood flow and pressure in the brain. The idea came from watching relatives affected by strokes and dementia, inspiring him to look for ways to help doctors monitor patients without opening the skull. CoMind is currently being trialled at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London ahead of a planned commercial launch, according to The Sun. His early work earned him a place in the Thiel Fellowship in 2022, a program established by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel that supports young entrepreneurs building companies instead of pursuing traditional higher education. The fellowship provides funding and mentorship, allowing recipients to focus on building their businesses full time. The grant was originally worth $100,000 and has since increased to $250,000. Its alumni include Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, Scale AI co-founder Lucy Guo and world's youngest self-made billionaires, Mercor's founders Surya Midha, Brendan Foody and Adarsh Hiremath. Turning to AI chips While CoMind focused on healthcare technology, Dacombe soon saw another opportunity as AI created soaring demand for computing power. In 2024, he founded Olix, initially under the name Flux, through his holding company, Bletchley Industries. Instead of developing AI applications, Olix focused on the chips that power them. The company develops inference chips, specialized semiconductors designed to run trained AI models. According to Olix, its chip designs use beams of light instead of copper to move data, an approach the company says can improve performance while reducing costs. It says its technology can "unlock a step change in AI performance and cost." Olix's approach has positioned it among a growing group of startups seeking to challenge Nvidia, whose graphics processing units dominate the global AI chip market. In the same year, Dacombe was named to The Sunday Times' inaugural Young Power List. Reflecting on starting a business as a teenager, he said: "An advantage of starting my business so young was naivety." "You don't have the scar tissues from what hasn't worked, so you just try a lot of things. Fortunately, some of them work." Dacombe told the Financial Times that specialized chips, rather than general-purpose graphics processors originally designed for gaming, would shape the future of AI computing. "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." "The velocity and culture of delivering when you say you will deliver is really key. We are on track to be the fastest company to go from founding to full chip tape out of any company in this space." Olix plans to finalize the design of its DX-1 chip this year before ramping up production in late 2027. The company employs more than 140 people across London, Bristol, Toronto, Austin and San Francisco. It also offers a £2,000 annual proximity bonus to employees who live within 20 minutes of its London King's Cross office. Backing Britain's AI future Olix's rapid growth comes as Britain seeks to strengthen its position in the global AI hardware industry by supporting domestic semiconductor companies through Sovereign AI. The startup is one of several British AI companies to secure major funding this year as investors race to capitalize on growing demand for AI infrastructure. AI minister Kanishka Narayan said Olix is "exactly the kind of ambitious company we want to back through Sovereign AI," adding that the startup had become one of the U.K.'s most exciting AI companies in just two years through its breakthrough chip technology. Alongside the latest funding, Olix appointed Stanford University computer scientist Nick McKeown to its board and named former Wise executive Nick Briers as chief financial officer, according to The Telegraph. Despite its rapid rise, Olix remains much smaller than Nvidia, whose graphics processing units have become the backbone of the global AI boom. Nvidia, valued at just under $5 trillion, briefly lost its position as the world's most valuable listed company to Apple last week. Joséphine Kant, head of ventures at Sovereign AI, said she left her first meeting with Dacombe "convinced he'd be one of the most important founders of his generation." "The company [Olix] is two years old and already one of the most ambitious hardware businesses in Britain. James not only wants to win globally, but he's also proud of where he's from."

25-year-old school dropout becomes UK's latest AI billionaire

Olix raised £232 million in a financing round led by New York-based Fundomo, with backing from British chip designer Arm, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and Sovereign AI, the U.K. government's artificial intelligence investment vehicle, according to British newspaper The Times. Before the fundraising, Dacombe owned a 38.6% stake in Olix through his holding company, Bletchley Industries, according to an analysis of Companies House filings. Based on Olix's new valuation, that stake would be worth about £946 million ($1.27 billion). His exact ownership following the funding round has not been publicly disclosed. Founded in 2024, Olix develops AI inference chips, specialized semiconductors designed to run trained artificial intelligence models more efficiently than conventional chips, according to The Sun. The company plans to finalize the design of its DX-1 chip this year before ramping up production in late 2027. Dacombe grew up in Harrogate, northern England, and taught himself computer programming at 13 by building websites and apps. After leaving Ashville College, he enrolled at St Aidan's and St John Fisher sixth form college in 2017 but dropped out after just two days. The following year, he founded CoMind, a medical technology company developing non-invasive brain-monitoring devices that aim to help doctors monitor brain activity without surgery. In 2022, Dacombe joined the Thiel Fellowship, a program established by PayPal billionaire co-founder Peter Thiel that provides $100,000 in funding, later increased to $250,000 for new participants, along with mentorship for young entrepreneurs pursuing businesses instead of higher education. He founded Olix two years later, initially under the name Flux, through his holding company Bletchley Industries, which also owns CoMind. Olix is among a growing group of semiconductor startups seeking to challenge Nvidia, whose graphics processing units dominate the market for training and running advanced AI models. The company says its chips do not rely on some memory components that remain in short supply, allowing AI systems to operate at lower cost while improving performance. Joséphine Kant, head of ventures at Sovereign AI, described Dacombe as "one of the most important founders of his generation." She added: "James not only wants to win globally, but he's also proud of where he's from."