# James Dacombe becomes Europe’s youngest self-made billionaire at 25 > Source: > Published: 2026-08-17 16:14:53+00:00 Via ibtimes.co.uk # James Dacombe becomes Europe’s youngest self-made billionaire at 25 The high school dropout's AI chip startup Olix tripled in value since February, hitting a $3.3 billion valuation after a $312 million funding round. A 25-year-old from Harrogate who left school at 16 just crossed the ten-figure net worth threshold, making him Europe’s youngest self-made billionaire. James Dacombe, the founder of AI chip startup Olix and neurotechnology firm CoMind, hit the milestone after Olix raised $312 million in a Series B round that valued the company at $3.3 billion. Dacombe owns an estimated 30% stake in Olix, which means his slice of the company alone is worth roughly $990 million. Factor in his 12% stake in CoMind, which raised $102.5 million last August, and the math clears the billion-dollar bar comfortably. ## From Flux Computing to a $3.3B valuation in two years Olix wasn’t always called Olix. Dacombe originally founded the company as Flux Computing in March 2024, rebranding it in January 2026. The startup’s valuation sat at roughly $1 billion back in February 2026. Six months later, it tripled. The investor roster includes Fundomo, Arm, Hudson River Trading, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, and the UK government’s Sovereign AI fund. In total, Olix has raised approximately $612 million across its funding rounds. The core product driving investor enthusiasm is the Optical Tensor Processing Unit, or OTPU. It’s a photonic processing chip designed for AI inference workloads. Instead of using electricity to shuttle data through silicon the traditional way, photonic chips use light, which can theoretically process certain AI tasks faster and with less energy. The technology positions Olix as a potential alternative to Nvidia’s dominant GPU architecture, particularly for companies frustrated by supply constraints and high-bandwidth memory shortages that have plagued the AI hardware market. ## The Dacombe playbook: drop out, build, repeat Dacombe dropped out of sixth form at 16, then taught himself to code and started building. The early validation came in 2022, when he received a Thiel Fellowship. Peter Thiel’s program, which pays young people $100K to skip college and build companies, has produced alumni like Vitalik Buterin and Austin Russell. CoMind came first. The neurotechnology company focuses on non-invasive brain monitoring. The $102.5 million it raised in August 2025 was substantial on its own. Combined, the two companies have attracted over $700 million in funding. ## What Olix’s rise signals for the AI chip market Companies like Cerebras, Groq, and various custom silicon efforts from hyperscalers like Google and Amazon have all aimed to chip away at Nvidia’s moat. When Arm, a company whose chip designs power virtually every smartphone on Earth, puts money into your startup, it registers as more than a speculative bet. The UK government’s participation through its Sovereign AI fund adds a geopolitical dimension. For the UK specifically, Olix represents a rare homegrown contender in a hardware sector dominated by American and Asian players. **Disclosure:** This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our [Editorial Policy](https://cryptobriefing.com/editorial-policy/).