Quantum News Nexus

London-based Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC), one of Nvidia’s key collaborators on hybrid quantum-classical AI supercomputing, announced the closing of an over-subscribed £260 million ($350 million USD) Series C funding round, which appears to be the largest private funding round yet for a European quantum computing company. 

The massive funding tally comes after OQC teamed up with Nvidia and Digital Realty last year to launch the first Quantum-AI data center in New York City. OQC is one of numerous firms building superconducting quantum computers, but OQC’s claim to differentiation–or at least one of them–is a proprietary coaxmon architecture that simplifies wiring on chips by isolating wiring from the qubit plane.

The round was led by Bullhound Capital, and included investment from (take a deep breath) the British Business Bank, Fynveur (advised by Invus), COFIDES, RCM Private Markets Fund managed by Rokos Capital Management (US) LP, Alpha Edison, Fulcrum Asset Management, Pentland Ventures, Magdalen College Oxford, Adaptive Capital Partners, Firgun Ventures, 18 West, and Oxford Capital (and let it out). Existing investors, including Oxford Science Enterprises, SBI, Chevron Technology Ventures, The University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners Co. and OTIF Ventures also participated.

We’re witnessing a busy time for fund-raising by superconducting quantum computing companies. Recent activity includes the US government grants announced for IBM, Rigetti Computing, and D-Wave Quantum, all of whom are working on superconducting systems in one form or another. Also, QuantWare last month announced $178 million to fuel its ambitions for an “open-platform” superconducting architecture, while Alice & Bob also earned a funding grant. The timing makes sense in terms of the maturity of this kind of architecture, as superconducting start-ups are dipping back into funding sources to support technology roadmaps that are somewhat longer than other modalities.

By the way, the previous largest funding round by a European quantum firm looks to have been a $320 million round announced last fall by Finland’s IQM Quantum Computers, also a superconducting quantum computing company. IQM is now on track for a SPAC merger and public stock market debut, so read into that what you want.

Image by freepik.

Quantum News Nexus is a site from freelance writer and editor Dan O’Shea that covers quantum computing, quantum sensing, quantum networking, quantum-safe security, and more. You can find him on X @QuantumNewsGuy and doshea14@gmail.com.