𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

An AI chip-making firm founded by a British entrepreneur who dropped out of college at 17 has sealed an extraordinary $3.3bn (£2.45bn) valuation after a fundraising round.

London-based Olix, which produces semiconductors and the wider technological framework that underpins the artificial intelligence industry, has tripled in value since February.

The company was created by 25-year-old James Dacombe two years ago as a genuine alternative option for businesses buying chips to run their AI models. The industry is currently dominated by Nvidia, so there’s a long way to go.

But the British entrepreneur has high hopes for what is already his second company. Before that, Mr Dacombe, who is from Harrogate, founded the company CoMind at just 17, leaving college to do so with the aid of Peter Thiel’s charitable fellowship.

The Thiel Fellowship is a highly competitive and sought-after grant which gives those chosen $250,000 (£186,000) – previously a lower amount – across two years to leave college and pursue a project or business they want to develop, without being in full-time or higher education.

Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, Lucy Guo, co-founder of Scale AI and previously the youngest self-made billionaire female of all time, and Chris Olah, co-founder of Claude producer Anthropic, are all previous Thiel Fellows.

The business Mr Dacombe started then, CoMind, is still one he remains involved in now. It is concerned with patient monitoring and treatment by way of non-invasive brain measurements,

Mr Dacombe also owns a third company: Bletchley Industries, a holding company which was formed last year to either buy up stakes in or otherwise create businesses which, in its own words, “will define the coming decades”.

Right now, the only two listed firms that it holds are Olix and CoMind – but the intention is clear that these are just the start.

The entrepreneur has previously called for the UK to have a major focus on business-building – and says it needs to happen fast.

“Every single UK founder I speak to who is Series A+ is seriously contemplating moving fully to the US. There really needs to be an urgent turn on policy in the UK. The UK really has phenomenal potential to become the Singapore of Europe, and the US evidently wants to help make that happen. Going to be impossible if all of the people who could make that happen leave,” he wrote on X last year.

As for Olix and its most recent move, it raised $312m (£231m) in the current investor round, with giant tech firm Arm and Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings among those putting forward cash. A previous valuation earlier this year saw Olix worth $1bn, meaning it has more than trebled in value in just six months.

The company has more than 140 employees, and offices in London, Bristol and the US.

Dacombe told the Financial Times that “specialisation” was the key component allowing Olix to flourish, rather than the off-the-shelf type of chip which has powered the AI revolution so far, largely produced by Nvidia.

“Today, where there is such an economic prize from being able to run very large powerful [large language models] fast and to a large number of users at a low cost, it really pays to disaggregate and have custom silicon that is good at that,” Mr Dacombe said.

“The velocity and culture of delivering when you say you will deliver is really key. We are on track to be the fastest company to go from founding to full chip tape out of any company in this space.”

Olix’s chips are built using some different components to the industry benchmark ones from Nvidia, as they seek to differentiate by offering products for specific purposes – as well as build them cheaper and run them faster.

Mr Dacombe plans to have the first batch of manufactured chips to customers next year.

Nvidia, the powerhouse chip producer which has been the biggest beneficiary so far of the AI revolution, is worth a little under $5 trillion (£3.7 trillion) and was the largest company in the world by market capitalisation, until last week when Apple overtook it.

The government’s Sovereign AI fund, which looks to back early stage British SME firms focused on AI, has also invested in Olix. AI minister Kanishka Narayan said: “The future of AI will be built on chips that power models. Countries that build chips will build leverage.

“Olix is exactly the kind of ambitious company we want to back through Sovereign AI. In just two years, it has established itself as one of the UK’s most exciting AI startups, developing breakthrough chip technology with the potential to help shape the future of AI.”

Howard Dawber, deputy mayor of London for business and growth, labelled Olix “one of our London Unicorns” on X, unicorn being the term handed to startup firms which grow to a billion-dollar valuation.

Olix has some notable differences in its approach and culture around staff, including paying employees 18 weeks’ wages to leave the firm if they feel they are not the right fit, and paying an extra £2,000 a month in salary to those who live within 20 minutes of the workplace.