Arm Holdings has backed a $312 million funding round for Olix, an AI chip startup developing specialized inference accelerators for data center workloads

Arm Holdings (NASDAQ: ARM) has invested in a $312 million funding round for artificial-intelligence chip startup Olix, valuing the company at $3.3 billion.

London-based Olix develops specialized processors designed to run trained AI models more efficiently than conventional chip architectures. The company's technology uses photonic interconnects—data transfer via light rather than traditional electrical signals—to reduce reliance on costly high-bandwidth memory, advanced packaging, and leading-edge manufacturing capacity. Olix also plans to sell complete server racks combining chips, networking equipment, and software into unified product offerings.

The round was led by Fundomo and included participants such as Hudson River Trading and Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) co-founder Reed Hastings.

The investment underscores Olix's rapid growth: the startup's valuation has more than tripled from just over $1 billion in February, when it raised $220 million in a previous funding round. This surge reflects intense investor appetite for alternatives to Nvidia's general-purpose GPUs as AI inference becomes an increasingly significant portion of data-center computing workloads.

Olix remains pre-commercial. The company expects to complete its chip tape-out by the end of 2026 and deliver first products to customers in 2027. Substantial manufacturing, software, and customer-validation risk remains before revenue can justify the current valuation.

The startup strengthened its leadership for this transition, naming Matt Briers—former chief financial officer of Wise—as Olix's CFO.

For Arm shareholders, the investment reinforces management's strategy to expand beyond smartphones into AI infrastructure and data-center markets. Arm recently reported record fiscal first-quarter revenue of $1.29 billion, a 22 percent year-over-year increase, with data-center royalty revenue more than doubling during the period. Management guided for fiscal second-quarter revenue of approximately $1.38 billion, plus or minus $50 million, with earnings scheduled for November 4.

Olix would become strategically meaningful for Arm only if its eventual chips drive licensing or royalty revenue. The funding participation alone is unlikely to materially alter Arm's near-term financial results.