Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) has closed a £260 million Series C funding round, the largest private quantum financing ever raised in Europe, in a clear signal that the technology has moved beyond the laboratory and into commercial infrastructure. The round, led by Bullhound Capital, was oversubscribed and included a £100 million commitment from the British Business Bank, alongside Mastercard, Rokos Capital Management, Magdalen College Oxford, Fynveur, COFIDES, Alpha Edison, Fulcrum Asset Management, Pentland Ventures, Adaptive Capital Partners, Firgun Ventures, 18 West, and Oxford Capital. Existing backers Oxford Science Enterprises, SBI, Chevron Technology Ventures, The University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners, and OTIF Ventures also participated. JPMorgan acted as exclusive placement agent.
The investment brings OQC’s total funding to approximately £430 million across three rounds, following a £38 million Series A in 2022 and a $100 million Series B in 2023. The British Business Bank’s involvement reflects the UK government’s broader strategic intent: Chancellor Rachel Reeves has committed up to £2 billion in government capital to support UK quantum companies, a bet that quantum computing represents not merely a scientific pursuit but a piece of national infrastructure. Nigel Higgins, Group Chairman of Barclays, has joined OQC’s board, underscoring the company’s push into financial services — a sector expected to see measurable quantum impact by 2028.
OQC, founded in 2017 by quantum physicist Dr Peter Leek as a spinout from the University of Oxford, builds superconducting quantum computers using its proprietary Coaxmon architecture. This patented 3D qubit design places components on opposite sides of a substrate, simplifying wiring and improving coherence compared with conventional 2D approaches. The result is a system engineered specifically for deployment directly into commercial data centres, alongside classical and AI computing infrastructure, rather than requiring specialised research facilities. While many quantum competitors still offer only cloud access to remote lab systems, OQC has already deployed operational quantum computers inside commercial data centres in the UK, US, Japan, and Spain — including New York City’s first quantum computer, housed in a Digital Realty facility in Chelsea alongside an Nvidia Grace Hopper Superchip. Its customers span financial services, defence, security, and scientific research. Dr Leek serves as Founder and Chief Scientific Officer; Gerald Mullally, who previously served as interim CEO and has a background in technology solutions at Accenture and PwC as well as experience in the UK Prime Minister’s Office and Cabinet Office, is CEO.
“This is a coming-of-age moment for British quantum computing,” Mullally said. “Globally, it represents a clear shift in the market from long-term promise to near-term delivery in quantum computing. For OQC, this 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.” Dr Leek added: “OQC was founded to use innovative quantum circuit designs to build engineered systems that scale as simply as possible. 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.”
The funding round comes as the global quantum arms race enters what industry observers describe as its capital-intensive final lap. Quantinuum, valued at approximately $12.7 billion, has filed for a Nasdaq IPO targeting up to $20 billion and received $100 million from the US government under the CHIPS Act. Pasqal is heading for a $2 billion SPAC listing on Nasdaq in the second half of 2026, while PsiQuantum has raised over $2.1 billion total. IQM Quantum Computers, a Finnish firm, raised $320 million in a September 2025 Series B, bringing its total to $600 million, and is pursuing a SPAC merger and dual listing on Nasdaq and the Helsinki Stock Exchange with a pre-money valuation of about $1.8 billion. On the same day as OQC’s announcement, French startup Quobly raised €115 million to commercialise silicon-based quantum processors, deploying its first commercial system by the end of 2026.
The competitive landscape reflects multiple qubit technologies, with no consensus on which architecture will win at commercial scale. OQC uses superconducting qubits — the same fundamental approach as IBM and Google — but differentiates on its Coaxmon 3D design and data-centre-native deployment model. Quantinuum uses trapped-ion qubits and is backed by Honeywell. Pasqal uses neutral-atom technology. PsiQuantum uses photonic qubits built on semiconductor manufacturing processes. Each approach carries different trade-offs in coherence time, error rates, and scalability. Per Roman, Founder and Managing Partner of Bullhound Capital, said: “OQC is building one of the most compelling quantum computing platforms globally, with the technology, infrastructure and customer focus required to scale. As quantum computing moves into global infrastructure, OQC is positioned to shape that transition.”
Fault-tolerant quantum computing — the kind that consistently outperforms classical computers on commercially useful problems — remains years away. Engineering challenges are immense, error rates are high, and most current systems are best described as noisy intermediate-scale rather than commercially decisive. The UK government’s ten-year vision, underpinned by £2.5 billion in quantum research and innovation from 2024 to 2034 and a target of accessible UK-based quantum computers capable of running 1 trillion operations by 2035, aims to position Britain as a leading quantum-enabled economy by 2033. The National Quantum Computing Centre is supporting adoption across key sectors. OQC and its peers are racing to establish infrastructure positions before the fault-tolerant threshold is crossed, betting that whoever has the most deployed systems, the deepest data-centre integration, and the strongest enterprise relationships when fault tolerance arrives will be impossible to displace. Britain has placed its bet — £260 million from private investors and up to £2 billion in government backing — on OQC being one of those companies.
