Highlights:

  • OQC has created a quantum processor architecture that separates qubits from their supporting hardware and relocates it off the silicon.
  • Less interference between the qubits on a device is what OQC promises to bring about, and this means fewer processing errors.

The London-based business OQC, which is creating superconducting quantum processors, revealed raising USD 100 million in capital to fuel its ongoing research.

SBI, a venture capital firm with its headquarters in Tokyo, led the Series B financing. It also received funding from several additional supporters, such as two Oxford University-affiliated investment businesses and the Edge Capital fund of the University of Tokyo. As per OQC, this amount represents the biggest Series B funding ever obtained by a quantum computing business based in the United Kingdom.

Using superconducting qubit technology as its foundation, Oxford Quantum Circuits Ltd., often known as OQC, creates quantum processors. Like a typical chip, these processors store and process data as electrical energy. Their composition of superconducting materials—that allow electricity to flow through them without losing energy—makes them different from one another.

Typically, electrons move between various parts of a circuit one at a time. Electrons arrange themselves into pairs in a superconducting circuit and travel at the same speed. These so-called Cooper pairs possess quantum mechanical characteristics that make them useful for computation.

A vast array of auxiliary parts is included in a quantum computer in addition to qubits. These parts oversee things like figuring out which qubit ought to do which processing duty. Qubits and their ancillary modules are frequently implemented by engineers on the same chip.

OQC has created a quantum processor architecture that separates qubits from their supporting hardware and relocates it off the chip. The business claims that its design has a number of benefits over other quantum computer architectures.

The most advanced quantum processors of the present day contain only a few dozen to one hundred qubits. Scaling such chips, or augmenting their qubit count without compromising qubit dependability, has demonstrated itself to be an extremely difficult engineering challenge. OQC asserts that its architecture substantially simplifies the scalability of quantum processors in comparison to competing methods.

The business claims that there are further advantages to their technology. Less interference between the qubits on a chip is what OQC promises to bring about, and this means fewer processing errors. In addition, compared to competing systems, its CPUs are easier to build in a few additional ways.

Together with the release of the OQC Toshiko, the company’s newest quantum processor, OQC released the details of its most recent investment round. With 32 qubits, the chip has four times as many as the prior technology used by the corporation. Currently in private preview, OQC Toshiko can be accessed over the public cloud or used in conjunction with traditional computing hardware like Nvidia Corp. processors.

Tim Costa, Nvidia’s Director of high-performance computing and quantum, said, “By combining OQC Toshiko with the Nvidia GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip through Nvidia CUDA Quantum, a platform for integrated quantum-classical computing, OQC can better empower businesses and researchers to make breakthroughs across industries and in critical scientific domains.”

OQC intends to use its Series B funds to develop a quantum processor that is more sophisticated than OQC Toshiko. It is anticipated that the chips will have several hundred qubits. The business wants to create a processor that can perform computations that are beyond complicated for a traditional supercomputer, or what is known as the “quantum advantage.”