Oxford Quantum Circuits has closed a £260M Series C, Europe’s largest-ever private quantum funding round led by Bullhound Capital, with the British Business Bank, Chevron, and JPMorgan acting as placement agent among participants.
The raise comes as quantum computing crosses from research project to deployed infrastructure, with OQC’s systems already running in commercial data centres across the UK, US, Japan, and Spain.
Combined with Quantinuum’s $10B valuation and its subsequent Nasdaq IPO filing, Pasqal’s $2B SPAC listing, and PsiQuantum’s $2.1B total raise, this round signals that the global quantum arms race has entered its capital-intensive final lap.
For the past three years, every boardroom conversation has been about AI. Every fund deck has had an AI slide. Every headline has belonged to a foundation model company. Quietly, in labs and data centres from Oxford to Tokyo, a different race has been running and now, Britain fired its loudest shot yet.
Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC), founded in 2017 by quantum physicist Dr Peter Leek as a spinout from the University of Oxford, has raised £260M in a Series C led by Bullhound Capital — Europe’s largest-ever private funding round for a quantum computing company.
