OLIX, Arm-backed AI chip startup, secures €270.5 million (~$300M USD) funding for accelerator design and manufacturing scale-up.

OLIX, a London-based semiconductor startup, has secured 270.5 million euros in a Series B funding round, valuing the company at 2.8 billion euros. The capital injection, just two years after the firm's inception, reflects investor confidence in its specialized approach to AI inference hardware.

The financing round was backed by Fundomo, Arm, and Hudson River Trading, alongside angel investors including Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings. To support its next phase of growth, OLIX has appointed Professor Nick McKeown—a Marconi Prize winner and Stanford University faculty member—to its board of directors. Former Wise executive Matt Briers has joined as Chief Financial Officer.

Founded in 2024, OLIX argues that current general-purpose chips are reaching efficiency limits in AI token production. The company's X-1 platform utilizes a production-line model where specialized chips handle specific stages of model execution, integrating a novel optical interconnect that transmits data using light rather than copper, significantly reducing latency and energy consumption.

The firm is developing the DX-1, a decode accelerator designed to process large-scale models. According to the company, the DX-1 achieves Pareto-optimal performance for 100B parameter models, delivering over 10,000 tokens per second per user. By utilizing on-chip SRAM memory, the design avoids reliance on high-bandwidth memory and advanced packaging, mitigating risks from industry-wide supply chain constraints.

OLIX plans to deploy the DX-1 to initial customers by the second half of 2027. The funding will support manufacturing ramp-up and expansion of engineering teams across London, Bristol, Austin, Toronto, and San Francisco. Through specialized hardware, the company aims to make frontier AI models more accessible and computationally efficient.