Olix triples valuation to $3.3 billion in $312 million optical AI-chip Series B

Olix, a London-based startup building optical chips for AI inference, raised a $312 million Series B at a $3.3 billion valuation. That more than triples the roughly $1 billion it was worth after a $220 million round in February 2026.

The financing was led by new investor Fundomo, with Arm, Hudson River Trading and Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings also joining. Existing backers including Hummingbird Ventures, Creandum, Plural and the UK government’s Sovereign AI venture fund increased their commitments.

Olix designs an end-to-end optical inference system, the chips, lasers and optical interconnects, and sells it as complete server racks rather than as a standalone processor. The pitch is that moving data with light rather than electrons can cut the power and latency costs that dominate large-scale AI inference. The company, founded about two years ago by 25-year-old James Dacombe, plans to ship its first products to customers in 2027.

To signal technical credibility, Olix appointed Nick McKeown, a Stanford professor emeritus and 2025 Marconi Prize winner, to its board, and hired Matt Briers, the former chief financial officer of Wise, as CFO.

The valuation is steep for a company that has not yet delivered hardware. Optical interconnects are an active research area, but turning them into a rack-scale product that beats entrenched GPU systems on cost and reliability is unproven at volume. The 2027 delivery target is the number to watch: whether Olix ships working racks on schedule, or the timeline slips as custom-silicon roadmaps often do.