UK Chip Startup Olix Secures $220 Million to Develop Photonic AI Processors
February 11, 2026
A UK-based semiconductor startup has secured a major funding round to advance an alternative approach to AI chip design, aiming to bypass the industry's reliance on high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and its associated supply chain bottlenecks. Olix, formerly known as Flux Computing, has raised $220 million in a round led by Hummingbird Ventures, according to a Financial Times report. This latest investment values the two-year-old company at $1 billion and includes backing from previous investors Plural, Vertex Ventures, LocalGlobe, and Entrepreneurs First. The company, founded in 2024 by 25-year-old entrepreneur James Dacombe, is developing optical digital processors that integrate photonics with SRAM-based architecture. Olix claims this design eliminates the need for HBM, a critical and supply-constrained component in current AI accelerators from leaders like Nvidia. The startup argues that its novel memory and interconnect architecture will deliver superior throughput per megawatt and a lower total cost of ownership while remaining compatible with existing AI models for inference workloads. In a statement on its corporate blog, Olix emphasized the strategic necessity of its approach, stating, "From a supply chain and fabrication perspective, a new architecture must forego HBM, advanced packaging, or any other technology that is supply chain-constrained by current incumbents. When even the biggest hyperscalers are struggling to secure capacity, a startup simply cannot compete." The company, which declined to comment directly on the funding, acknowledged the FT report on its LinkedIn page, where it also advertised hiring efforts in the UK and North America. Industry sources suggest Olix is targeting 2027 for initial customer deliveries of its first products. This significant funding round highlights the intense investor appetite for innovations that could disrupt the current AI hardware landscape, which is dominated by a few key players and faces persistent challenges in securing advanced memory and packaging components. Olix's photonic approach represents a growing frontier in semiconductor research, potentially offering a path to more power-efficient and scalable AI inference solutions if successfully commercialized.
Source: datacenterdynamics
