# OLIX raises $312M Series B at $3.3B valuation for photonic AI inference chips

> London-based OLIX has raised a $312 million Series B at a $3.3 billion valuation, with the UK government's Sovereign AI fund among the backers and networking pioneer Nick McKeown joining its board. The startup, founded only in 2024, is building AI inference systems that lean on photonics, using light rather than purely electronic signals to move and process data. The bet is on inference, the running of trained models, which is where most of AI's long-term compute cost actually sits. Photonic approaches promise to cut the energy and latency penalties that come from shuttling data around conventional chips, and OLIX is packaging chips, photonics, and networking together rather than selling a single component. Its DX-1 decode accelerator is targeted at customers in the second half of 2027. That timeline is the honest catch: this is deep, unproven hardware years from shipping, in a market Nvidia dominates. But the government money signals something beyond one company, a push for sovereign AI compute so that Britain is not wholly dependent on American silicon.

_Section: [AI Funding Tracker](https://www.wortins.com/funding) · Source: New Electronics · Published Tuesday, August 4, 2026_

## Wortins' read

London-based OLIX has raised a $312 million Series B at a $3.3 billion valuation, with the UK government's Sovereign AI fund among the backers and networking pioneer Nick McKeown joining its board. The startup, founded only in 2024, is building AI inference systems that lean on photonics, using light rather than purely electronic signals to move and process data. The bet is on inference, the running of trained models, which is where most of AI's long-term compute cost actually sits. Photonic approaches promise to cut the energy and latency penalties that come from shuttling data around conventional chips, and OLIX is packaging chips, photonics, and networking together rather than selling a single component. Its DX-1 decode accelerator is targeted at customers in the second half of 2027. That timeline is the honest catch: this is deep, unproven hardware years from shipping, in a market Nvidia dominates. But the government money signals something beyond one company, a push for sovereign AI compute so that Britain is not wholly dependent on American silicon.

## Source

[Read the full story at New Electronics](https://www.newelectronics.co.uk/content/news/olix-raises-312m-in-series-b-funding-and-adds-networking-pioneer-nick-mckeown-to-board)

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