UK chipmaker startup now valued at over £2 billion
Key Points
- UK tech unicorn OLIX just closed a Series B funding round, which the company now valued at well over £2 billion.
- OLIX is developing specialised chips for AI inference, aiming to replace general-purpose chips with a more efficient computing model that can scale and perform more efficiently.
- The company appointed renowned computer scientist Professor James McKeown to its board, adding to its cadre of expertise.
- OLIX is backed by the UK government's Sovereign AI fund, which provided equity investment to the firm in its latest funding round.
UK tech unicorn OLIX, which aims to develop a new generation of chips specifically designed to run AI models, has just raised £232 million ($312 million) in a Series B funding round, which the company now valued at well over £2 billion.
OLIX is developing specialised chips for AI inference, which it says could unlock AI compute at a fraction of the cost of using the general-purpose chips used in data centres around the world today.
The company is developing chips to run on its X-1 platform, an AI chip architecture that connects specialised chips with high-throughput low-latency fibre interconnects instead of copper, and it uses a fully deterministic compiler to coordinate operations across this platform.
The company’s first chip under development is its decode accelerator, DX-1, which operates at the stage a model reasons and generates output. It is expected to deliver much better performance at these tasks than general-purpose chips while being able to scale up to 10 trillion parameters and above.
OLIX plans to ship DX-1 to its first customers by H2 2027, along with the foundation of its customer silicon architecture for specialised AI compute.
In addition to announcing its Series B, the company also said appointed Professor Nick McKeown to its board of directors. McKeown was an early pioneer in modern computing, having co-invented software-defined networking and founding several companies.
Backed by UK government fund
Investors in OLIX’s Series B funding round include Arm, Hudson River Trading, and Fundomo, as well as the UK’s government-backed Sovereign AI fund.
The Sovereign AI fund is a government-backed initiative that aims to drive the development of home-grown AI startups and companies to better position the UK for unlocking the economic and industrial potential of this new technology.
It aims to help early-stage AI companies to grow from Britain, and it has already invested in five companies since its inception, providing a further six with access to compute.
“OLIX is exactly the kind of ambitious company we want to back through Sovereign AI,” said AI Minister Kanishka Narayan.
“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,” he said.
“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.”
