Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC), the UK-based scaleup building and deploying quantum computers, has raised a £260m ($350m) Series C.
The raise marks the biggest ever funding round ever by a private quantum computing company in Europe, following a $600m equity raise bagged by UK- and US-based Quantinuum in 2025.
The Series C is the fourth megaround ($100m+) raised by a quantum computing company in Europe since the start of the year, already surpassing three that were announced across all of 2025, and reflecting sustained investor interest in the sector.
Quantum computing is maturing, after long being considered a niche market relying on a yet-to-be-proven technology. Companies in the space are now promising to unlock business value in the coming years, attracting more customer interest and plenty of investor money.
OQC’s round was led by Bullhound Capital, with participation from the British Business Bank, alongside European investors Fynveur, Cofides, Fulcrum Asset Management, Pentland Ventures, Magdalen College Oxford, Oxford Capital and Firgun.
US investment firms Alpha Edison and 18 West, as well as Singapore’s Adaptive Capital Partners also participated.
What does OQC do?
OQC builds quantum computers using superconducting qubits. This means it uses electrons to create qubits, or quantum bits, which are the tiny particles forming the basis of quantum computers.
Superconducting qubits are the approach adopted by major players in the space, including US tech giants IBM and Google, as well as Finnish company IQM, which recently announced plans to list on Nasdaq at a $1.8bn valuation.
OQC has also built a platform to enable customers to access its quantum computers “as a service", which means the scaleup deploys quantum systems in partner data centres like US-based Equinix and Digital Realty. These partners in turn offer access to the systems via the cloud, or enable users to run their workloads directly on the devices, as if on their own premises.
“Customers buy time on our quantum computer, rather than buying a quantum computer,” says Gerald Mullally, the CEO of OQC.
To date the company has deployed quantum systems in data centres across London, Tokyo and New York, with two more sites about to be announced, says Mullally.
OQC has also sold one system deployed directly on the customer’s premises in Spanish supercomputing centre CESGA.
The scaleup says its technology can integrate with infrastructure built for classical computing, with its quantum processors working together with standard ones.
“This is very important because quantum doesn’t replace other types of compute,” says Mullally. “It will sit alongside and be integrated with classical compute. In the same way that you have CPUs and GPUs, we will see QPUs (quantum processing units) sitting on top of that.”
Commercialising quantum computing
Mullaly says the opportunity to have direct access to a quantum computer in partner data centres is particularly attractive for customers in regulated sectors like finance and defence, which need to make sure their data is stored securely.
Demand for the technology is driven by enterprise and government customers in finance, defence and security, according to the company. Mullally declined to share OQC’s latest revenue figures.
The Series C will help the scaleup expand its presence to new geographies as well as to improve the capabilities of its systems.
OQC’s most advanced quantum computer to date has 32 qubits, far less than the millions of qubits needed to build a fully-fledged device with real-world applications, but enough to attract interest from customers planning to test with and prepare for the technology.
“One of the core objectives is to build and deploy our next-generation system, which moves us into the commercial era of quantum,” says Mullally.
