Olix's $3.3B Chip Round Leads a Volatile AI Monday

London-based Olix tripled its valuation in six months to headline a choppy Monday for AI-linked stocks, as Korean chipmakers reversed Friday’s record rally and SpaceX braced for a pivotal earnings report.

Key points

• Olix raised a $312 million Series B at a $3.3 billion valuation, up from roughly $1 billion in February, closing Europe’s largest-ever semiconductor VC round.
• Samsung fell 6.48% and SK Hynix lost 6.69% on Monday morning in Seoul, giving back a chunk of Friday’s extraordinary 26-30% gains; the Kospi dropped 4.25%.
• SpaceX has fallen from $225 to around $110 over the past six weeks, a roughly 51% drawdown, ahead of its Q2 earnings report due August 4.
• Amazon was reiterated at Strong Buy, with analysts pointing to AWS, advertising, and subscriptions as compounding margin drivers alongside AI demand.
• A global AI-linked selloff weighed on Chinese chipmakers on Monday, though Alibaba bucked the trend after unveiling a new AI model.

Olix: why Europe’s biggest chip round matters

Olix focuses on frontier inference chips, a corner of the market that has attracted intense investor interest as hyperscalers hunt for more efficient alternatives to Nvidia’s dominance at the inference layer. The London startup’s Series B brought in new backers including Arm, Hudson River Trading, and Fundomo, alongside returning investors Hummingbird Ventures, Crane, and Plural. Arm’s participation is strategically notable: the chip architecture giant has a direct interest in seeing inference workloads migrate to its instruction set.

The valuation jump from $1 billion to $3.3 billion in roughly six months reflects how quickly capital is moving toward anyone credibly competing in AI silicon. For context, the round also adds fresh board appointments and a new CFO, signaling a company building out the operational infrastructure to match its funding ambitions. Olix remains private, but its trajectory will be watched closely by investors tracking the publicly listed chip supply chain, including ASML and TSMC, both of which benefit as any new AI chip architecture eventually needs advanced lithography and fabrication.

Was Friday’s Korean chip rally a bull trap?

The question is fair. Samsung surged 26.81% and SK Hynix hit its 29.95% limit-up ceiling on Friday, the kind of single-session moves that typically follow severe overselling. The catalyst included strong results from Microsoft and Amazon, which calmed fears about a broader pullback in hyperscaler capex. Friday’s rebound came after the Kospi had shed more than 17% across three sessions, leaving short sellers heavily exposed.

Monday’s reversal, while sharp, does not necessarily invalidate Friday’s move. Profit-taking after a 30% single-day gain is mechanical, not necessarily a verdict on the underlying thesis. The more meaningful question for investors is whether AI infrastructure spending, particularly on high-bandwidth memory, is durable enough to support current valuations once the volatility settles. That answer will arrive in pieces through the August earnings cycle.

SpaceX earnings: $1.4 trillion in reversals, then what?

SpaceX reports Q2 results on August 4. The stock has shed roughly half its value from a June peak of $225, now trading near $110. Ahead of the print, one analyst sent what was characterized as a strong positive signal, but investors are braced for a quarter marked by heavy capital expenditure, uncertain free cash flow, and a valuation that still demands a lot even after the drawdown.

SpaceX sits at an unusual intersection for AI investors: its Starlink satellite network is increasingly framed as AI-linked infrastructure, and its Starshield government contracts add a layer of durable revenue that pure-play AI names lack. Whether that narrative holds up against the actual Q2 numbers is what Tuesday will reveal. For now, the stock’s halving from peak is a reminder that even the most high-conviction AI-adjacent positions carry significant multiple risk when sentiment shifts.

Amazon’s margin story broadens

Beyond the ongoing AWS versus Google Cloud debate covered in previous editions, one analyst note out Monday argues Amazon’s margin expansion is broader than AWS alone. Advertising revenue and Prime subscriptions are both high-margin businesses scaling alongside AI-driven personalization, making Amazon’s earnings quality more diversified than the single-segment narrative suggests. The stock’s Strong Buy reiteration fits a pattern where post-earnings selling has been treated as a buying opportunity across the major hyperscalers this cycle.

Separately, a Yahoo Finance analysis asked which of Apple, Meta, or Microsoft a value-oriented investor would favor right now, framing one of the three as fitting a classic dominant-franchise-at-a-discount profile. The piece does not constitute investment advice, and the framing leans on sentiment more than fundamentals, but it reflects a broader investor conversation about relative value across mega-cap AI names after a volatile few weeks.