Olix Raised $312 Million at $3.3 Billion. Its Own Release Names No Lead Investor.

London optical-computing startup Olix announced a $312 million Series B on August 3 at a $3.3 billion post-money valuation. Founded in 2024, the company builds inference systems that move data between dies with light rather than copper, selling complete racks including lasers, networking and software. Its X-1 platform unrolls a model across many specialised chips, each handling one stage of token production; the DX-1 decode accelerator is claimed at more than 10,000 tokens per second per user on 100-billion-parameter models.

Who is actually in the round

The company's own wording is flat: the round "included Fundomo, Arm and Hudson River Trading, alongside angel investors including Reed Hastings." Returning backers Hummingbird Ventures, Crane, Plural, Creandum, Phoenix Court and Transition all followed on. Stanford's Nick McKeown joined the board; former Wise CFO Matt Briers becomes CFO.

Three errors already in circulation

First, the lead. Two outlets reported the round as "led by Fundomo" and a third listed three lead investors. The release designates no lead at all — that structure was added by the coverage. Second, the currency: the figures are US dollars, yet the round has been written up as £312 million at £3.3 billion, and headlined as a valuation "over £2 billion." Third, the arithmetic. February's $220 million plus August's $312 million is $532 million, against one report of "more than $300 million" raised in total.

What the valuation is paying for

The multiple is the story the number buries. Olix roughly tripled its valuation in about six months on a company whose X-1 platform is still in design and test, whose DX-1 decode accelerator does not reach a customer until H2 2027, and which has named no customer and disclosed no revenue. Manufacturing photonic parts at competitive yields remains unsolved.

The state money in the cap table

Coverage of the round — though not the company's own release — reports the UK government's Sovereign AI venture fund as an existing investor that increased its commitment, with the AI minister calling Olix the kind of ambitious company the programme wants to back. That is a follow-on of undisclosed size into a pre-revenue design house, not a new allocation of sovereign compute.