The new Welsh Government could take the lead on this by establishing a national young founder’s fellowship to identify exceptional talent in schools, colleges, universities and local communities
The story of James Dacombe should be compulsory reading for everyone involved in economic development in Wales.
James left sixth form after only a few days, taught himself to code and established his first technology business while still a teenager. Now aged just 25, he is the founder of Olix, a British company developing specialist computer chips to make artificial intelligence faster, cheaper and more energy efficient.
Founded in 2024, the company has reportedly raised more than £200m at a valuation of approximately £2.5bn. It already employs more than 140 people and has attracted backing from major global technology companies and investors. It is a remarkable story, but for anyone who cares about the future of the Welsh economy, it should raise one obvious question – why not Wales?
South Wales has one of Europe’s most significant concentrations of semiconductor expertise, and the cluster around Cardiff and Newport brings together advanced manufacturing, specialist skills, world-class research, and companies developing technologies for artificial intelligence, communications, transport, energy and medical devices.
The problem is not that Wales lacks the science, engineering capability or industrial foundations from which businesses such as Olix could emerge, but that we have failed to create a system capable of identifying, nurturing and backing young people with the ambition to build them.
For many years, entrepreneurship support in Wales has focused on encouraging self-employment and conventional small businesses. There is nothing wrong with that, and such firms make an important contribution to local economies but helping someone become self-employed is not the same as creating a genuinely entrepreneurial economy.
A support system centred on business plans, workshops and small grants is not necessarily equipped to support a teenager who wants to design the next generation of artificial intelligence chips. Too much of our approach to young entrepreneurship remains rooted in employability rather than innovation, and starting a business is often treated as another route into work rather than as a means of creating new industries, commercialising knowledge, and building internationally competitive companies.
An ambitious technology founder needs something different, including specialist knowledge, access to laboratories and equipment, experienced mentors, and early customers and investors who understand that breakthrough technology is expensive, uncertain and time-consuming. Yet much of the support available remains generic, fragmented and cautious, and there is rarely a clear route for a founder who needs to move rapidly from an idea to a prototype and then to a business. We measure how many people attend events or complete programmes but are less effective at measuring whether the businesses created survive, scale, export, attract investment or generate highly productive employment. In other words, we have built a system that can process young entrepreneurs without necessarily developing them.
The real test is simple – what would happen if a 16-year-old from Newport, Swansea, Wrexham or the Valleys approached the existing support system to say they wanted to build a billion-pound artificial intelligence or semiconductor company?
Would they be taken seriously? Would they be connected with Wales’s leading engineers, researchers and technology entrepreneurs, given access to facilities and introduced to investors who understood the opportunity? Or would they be directed towards a generic business-planning course and told to return when they had more qualifications, experience or trading history?
That is the uncomfortable question we need to answer, as exceptional entrepreneurial talent rarely arrives in a conventional form. It may emerge from a university laboratory, but it may equally come from an apprentice, a school-leaver, a self-taught programmer, or someone who has never fitted comfortably within formal education.
A genuinely entrepreneurial economy must recognise potential even when it does not come with the right qualifications or networks. This matters in Wales, where many talented young people grow up without connections to business, technology or investment. They may have the ability and imagination, but not the contacts or financial security needed to turn an idea into a company.
The education system also has a role to play, as entrepreneurship is still too often presented through occasional competitions rather than sustained exposure to how ambitious companies are created. Young people should learn about coding, product development, intellectual property, finance and investment, meet founders, and understand that entrepreneurship can be a serious career. Indeed, the fact that Cardiff University alone has 32,000 students but produced only 55 student startups in 2024-25 speaks volumes about the lost potential within our university system.
The new Welsh Government could take the lead on this by establishing a national young founder’s fellowship to identify exceptional talent in schools, colleges, universities and local communities. Those selected should receive a living allowance, intensive mentoring, access to facilities, help in assembling a team and introductions to customers and investors with selection should be based on potential rather than qualifications or connections.
More importantly, those young founders should be able to enter the Welsh support system through one door and be connected rapidly to the people, knowledge and facilities needed to develop an idea. Instead, too many are left to navigate a maze of organisations and programmes, none of which takes responsibility for the founder’s complete journey.
The success of Olix is not simply the story of one unusually talented young person but demonstrates what can happen when ambition is met by technical expertise, experienced supporters and investors prepared to take a risk. As we all know, Wales does not lack intelligent, creative or determined young people and nor do we lack technologies with the potential to create the industries of the future. What we lack is a coherent system designed to bring the two together.
However, for too long, our business support system has failed to encourage exceptional young people to think globally, take risks and build companies capable of transforming industries. Unless that changes, Wales will continue to possess the talent, technology and ideas from which the businesses of the future could emerge, while watching those businesses being created somewhere else.



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