UK-backed chip startup Olix raises $312M for photonic inference chips

Olix raised $312 million at a $3.3 billion valuation, backed in part by the UK government's Sovereign AI venture fund. The startup is developing specialized inference chips linked by a photonic interconnect.

Why it matters: This fits a wider government push to build sovereign AI compute capacity outside the US/China axis, and photonic interconnects are increasingly seen as necessary to scale inference clusters efficiently. A $3.3B valuation for an inference-focused chip startup also signals investors betting heavily on inference, not just training, as the next compute bottleneck.