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Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC), a spin-out of the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, has closed a £260 million Series C funding round — the largest ever raised by a quantum computing company in Europe.
OQC was founded in 2017 by Dr Peter Leek, who leads a group researching superconducting quantum circuits at the Department of Physics and serves as the company's Chief Scientific Officer. The company develops and operates superconducting quantum computers designed for commercial and strategic applications, with systems deployed in the UK, US, Japan and Spain.
The oversubscribed round was led by Bullhound Capital and includes investment from the British Business Bank, Oxford Science Enterprises and Chevron, among others. The funding will support OQC's international expansion, accelerate hardware and platform development, and scale quantum infrastructure in key markets.
‘OQC was founded to use innovative quantum circuit designs to build engineered systems that scale as simply as possible,' said Dr Leek. ‘I’m proud to be part of the incredible team we have today doing exactly that, to pioneer the future of quantum computing. This investment supports the next stage of our work: advancing system performance and reliability while continuing to integrate quantum computers into the trusted infrastructure customers depend on.'
OQC holds the distinction of being Europe's first Quantum-Compute-as-a-Service provider and the only company to integrate quantum computers directly into commercial data centres. The company's research and IP originated in Dr Leek's laboratory at Oxford, where work on superconducting quantum circuits began in 2012.
Dr Phillip Tait, who heads innovation and enterprise at the Department of Physics, welcomed the announcement: 'This is a great achievement by Peter and the OQC team and we look forward to continuing our collaboration on the journey to realising the full potential of quantum computing.'
Dr Leek joins a number of Oxford Physics colleagues who combine academic research with leadership roles in department spin-outs, including Professor Henry Snaith FRS who is Chief Scientific Officer at Oxford PV and Helio Display Materials, Dr Joe Goodwin who is CTO of Quantum Fabrix, and Dr Ramy Aboushelbaya as CEO of Quantum Dice.
Further information is available at oqc.tech