Oxford Quantum Circuits raises £260M in Europe’s largest private quantum round

Oxford Quantum Circuits has closed a £260 million Series C round, roughly $350 million. That makes it the largest private quantum computing investment Europe has ever seen.

The round, completed in early June 2026, lifts the University of Oxford spinout to a valuation of around $1 billion. For a company founded in 2017, that is a lot of zeros attached to a technology most people still struggle to explain at dinner parties.

Who wrote the checks

Bullhound Capital led the raise. The British Business Bank committed £100 million, its biggest investment in any single company to date.

Existing backers also returned. Oxford Science Enterprises and Chevron Technology Ventures both joined the round.

J.P. Morgan served as placement agent. The bank is also working with OQC on potential quantum-AI platforms, which hints at where some of the commercial demand may come from.

The funding trajectory tells its own story. OQC raised about $40.5 million in a Series A in 2022, then $100 million in a Series B in 2024. The Series C is several times larger than either.

What OQC actually builds

OQC builds superconducting quantum computers using its patented Coaxmon 3D architecture. The company sells access through a Quantum-Compute-as-a-Service model. Customers do not buy a quantum computer outright. They rent its processing power, much like companies rent servers from cloud providers instead of building their own data centers.

OQC’s systems already run in commercial data centers across the UK, US, Japan, and Spain. Finance, defense, and security are among the sectors looking to use the technology for problems that classical computing cannot handle well.

The leadership team includes CEO Gerald Mullally and chief scientific officer Dr. Peter Leek.

Where the money goes

OQC plans to spend the new capital on three fronts. It wants to expand its international footprint, develop next-generation quantum hardware, and build out quantum infrastructure in key markets.

Developments as of November 2026 suggest the company is still pushing its technology forward. It is also reportedly negotiating further institutional investment, so the Series C may not be the last check this year.

The broader policy backdrop is supportive. The UK government is signaling it could back the quantum sector with up to £2 billion.

What this means for the quantum market

For investors, the size of this round is the headline number, but the composition is the more interesting signal. A mix of venture capital, a state-backed bank, a university commercialization fund, an energy major’s venture arm, and a global investment bank as placement agent is a broad coalition.

The British Business Bank’s £100 million also reframes OQC as something close to national infrastructure. Paired with the potential £2 billion in government support for the sector, the UK is making a coordinated bet.

The service model helps offset some risk. Renting compute time through data centers lets OQC generate revenue and gather customer feedback without waiting for a fully mature machine.

Watch the follow-on institutional talks and whether the government funding materializes at the full scale being signaled.