The UK Government’s Sovereign AI venture fund has backed British chip company OLIX as part of a nine-figure fundraise announced on 30 July.
OLIX, based in London and with offices in Bristol, is developing the next generation of AI chips. The Government said the company is one of Britain’s newest unicorns, meaning it is valued at more than $1 billion.
The company is working on faster, cheaper and more energy-efficient chips for artificial intelligence. Its focus is a family of inference chips, designed so that each chip specialises in a particular part of an AI model’s processing.
The Government said specialised chips working together in this way could help make AI cheaper, less energy-intensive and better performing. It said advances in chip technology would be critical to strengthening Britain’s domestic AI capability.
Sovereign AI is described by government as a fund for promising early-stage AI companies to help them grow and scale from Britain. OLIX is the fifth company to receive equity investment from the fund since its launch.
AI Minister Kanishka Narayan said OLIX was the kind of company the fund was intended to support. He said countries that build chips will build leverage, and that Britain needs to back the technologies underpinning AI.