Oxford Quantum Circuits has raised £260 million in a Series C funding round.
The British Business Bank committed £100m to the round, one of Europe’s largest for a quantum computing company.
The round was led by Bullhound Capital, and included investment from Invus, Mastercard, COFIDES, Rokos Capital Management, IHAG, Fulcrum Asset Management, Pentland Ventures, Magdalen College Oxford, Adaptive Capital Partners, Firgun and 18 West.
Founded in the UK as a spinout from Oxford University, OQC develops and operates superconducting quantum computers designed for deployment in data-centre environments.
The company has established an international quantum computing platform across Europe, North America and Asia, with systems deployed in the UK, US, Japan and Spain, and will use the funding to expand its infrastructure in key global markets.
OQC is seeing increasing demand from sectors including financial services, defence and security, where organisations are looking to quantum computing to address complex problems beyond the practical reach of regular computing systems. The funding will be used to expand OQC’s operational presence in priority markets and advance its next-generation quantum systems for commercial deployment.
“This funding marks a defining moment for OQC. It gives us the capital to scale internationally, advance our technology roadmap and meet increasing demand from customers seeking secure, scalable access to quantum computing infrastructure,” said Gerald Mullally (pictured), CEO of OQC.
“Quantum computing is becoming critical infrastructure, and OQC is building the platform to deliver it at commercial scale.”
Leandros Kalisperas, chief investment officer at the British Business Bank, said, “For deeptech in the UK, the challenge is not invention, it’s scale. In order to build global companies rooted in the UK, our financial firepower must match our scientific excellence.
“The Bank sees this as nothing short of a national economic imperative, so we are acting at pace to deliver significantly higher levels of funding for UK scale ups.”
George Mills, senior investment director, direct equity, at the British Business Bank, said: “Quantum computing has the potential to solve some of the hardest computing challenges which remain unsolved by AI, but is held back by its ability to scale up.
“OQC’s systems fill that gap with their world leading speed and scalability. We are delighted to be backing the team at OQC again as they scale up their commercial offering with the development of OQC TITAN.”