The UK Government’s Sovereign AI venture fund has invested in British technology company OLIX as part of a nine-figure fundraise supporting the development of faster, cheaper and more energy-efficient artificial intelligence chips.
OLIX, which is based in London and has offices in Bristol, is developing a new generation of specialised chips designed specifically for AI systems. The company has already achieved a valuation of more than $1 billion, making it one of Britain’s newest technology unicorns.
The investment makes OLIX the fifth company to receive equity backing from Sovereign AI since the fund was launched. Eleven companies have now received some form of Sovereign AI support, including assistance with accessing computing capacity.
Reinventing the chips that power AI
OLIX is seeking to redesign the hardware underpinning artificial intelligence by creating a family of specialised “inference chips”.
Inference refers to the process through which a trained AI model applies its knowledge to new information, generates an answer or makes a decision.
Rather than relying on a single general-purpose processor, OLIX’s proposed system would use different chips specialising in particular parts of an AI model’s thinking process. These chips would work together in a similar way to tasks being coordinated across a factory production line.
The company believes this approach could make AI systems cheaper to operate, more energy-efficient and capable of delivering stronger performance.
As governments and companies compete to construct the infrastructure required to support increasingly powerful AI systems, access to advanced semiconductor technology is becoming an important economic and strategic consideration.
Backing British companies developing AI chips could help the UK strengthen its domestic capabilities, create highly skilled employment and retain a greater proportion of the economic value generated by artificial intelligence.
Government seeks greater influence over AI infrastructure
Sovereign AI has been established to support promising early-stage AI companies seeking to grow and scale from the UK.
The Government says the programme combines the speed and ambition associated with venture capital investment with the financial and institutional support of the state.
It is intended to help ambitious British technology businesses overcome barriers to growth and compete internationally, while maintaining a meaningful operational presence in the UK.
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.
“If we want Britain to lead in AI, we need to back the technologies that sit underneath it. That’s how we’ll attract investment, create high-skilled jobs and ensure the UK remains a country that builds the future of AI, not just uses it.”
A trillion-dollar global market
The Government expects the global AI chip market to reach a value of $1 trillion during the early 2030s.
It estimates that securing 5 per cent of that market could generate $50 billion in revenue for the UK and support tens of thousands of highly paid technology jobs.
The investment also reflects an anticipated shift away from general-purpose processors and towards bespoke hardware designed specifically for particular AI applications and workloads.
British companies that successfully develop these technologies could play a significant role in the international market for the computing infrastructure required to train and operate AI systems.
From British startup to technology unicorn
OLIX was founded in 2024 by entrepreneur James Dacombe, who previously established the neurotechnology company CoMind.
Earlier in 2026, Dacombe led OLIX through a $220 million Series A financing round, described by the Government as one of the largest Series A rounds ever completed by a UK technology company.
Sovereign AI Head of Ventures Joséphine Kant said:
“I left my first meeting with James convinced he’d be one of the most important founders of his generation.
“OLIX is completely rethinking what an inference chip should be from first principles and doing it from the UK. The company is two years old and already one of the most ambitious hardware businesses in Britain.
“James not only wants to win globally, but he’s also proud of where he’s from. You can see both in the name he chose for his holding company: Bletchley Industries.”
Companies supported by Sovereign AI are expected to retain a meaningful presence in Britain through their founders, senior leadership, operating headquarters or a substantial proportion of their workforce.
The Government argues that this approach will help anchor intellectual property, investment and well-paid employment in the UK as the international AI sector expands.
Building sovereign capability
The OLIX investment highlights the growing relationship between AI policy, industrial strategy, semiconductor development and national infrastructure.
The UK’s ability to benefit from AI will depend not only on developing new models and software applications, but also on access to the chips, computing capacity, energy and data infrastructure required to operate them.
For policymakers and industry leaders, the challenge will be ensuring that public investment helps promising British businesses scale internationally while building a stronger domestic supply chain and delivering measurable economic benefits across the country.
Welcoming the investment, UKAI Chief Executive, Tim Flagg said: “This is a welcome vote of confidence in UK-built AI infrastructure, and it’s encouraging to see the Sovereign AI fund backing companies in the areas where the UK can genuinely lead. Inference chips like OLIX’s aren’t just a bet on how AI is deployed today, they’re a bet on how compute gets deployed tomorrow: distributed across smarter cities, pushed out to the edge, closer to where decisions actually need to be made.
“That’s a race Britain can win!
“However, we should be honest about where this investment is landing. If this fund is genuinely about reindustrialising Britain, its next investments need to support the incredible research and scaleups around the UK’s regions, backing the engineering talent in Manchester, Leeds, Belfast, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow, and beyond.”
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Photo: Minister Narayan opens the AI Adoption Summit at the Science Museum (Alecsandra Dragoi/DSIT)