A pair of university professors have secured the biggest ever investment for a British quantum computing company amid a global race to master the high-powered devices.
London-based Quantum Motion has raised £42m from investors including the taxpayer’s technology investment fund and Porsche SE, the German family-owned multinational behind the Volkswagen Group.
Quantum Motion was spun out of University College London by professors John Morton and Simon Benjamin, who have spent two decades researching quantum technology at the London university and at Oxford.
The start-up hopes to be able to build and sell quantum computers to customers, such as cloud computing providers, by the end of the decade.
Quantum computers are expected to be exponentially more effective at tasks such as codebreaking and scientific research, meaning they are seen as a national security priority.
The machines differ from today’s computers, which deal in bits – the ones and zeros of existing software. Quantum devices deal in qubits, which are governed by quantum physics and include states in between one and zero.
As a result, quantum devices are capable of hugely complex scientific modelling and cracking the encryption used to secure messages and passwords. Britain has invested heavily in the technology and introduced restrictions on its sale abroad because of both its scientific potential and security implications.
Quantum Motion is taking a different approach to the technology from giants such as Google and IBM, which are also building their own quantum computers. Instead, the British start-up is building on existing microchip manufacturing technology, rather than trying to utilise electromagnetic fields or light signals.
It believes this will make it cheaper to develop quantum machines that could be used by researchers, scientists and governments.
Last year the company hit a milestone when it said it was able to place thousands of quantum devices on a microchip.
The investment in Quantum Motion is being led by the venture capital arm of the German industrial giant Bosch. The taxpayer is investing through Future Fund Breakthrough, a £375m fund set up by Rishi Sunak in 2021 in an effort to support high-tech companies.
It followed an earlier fund designed to keep start-ups afloat during the pandemic, which took stakes in more than a thousand companies.
Quantum Motion’s co-founders remain the two biggest shareholders.
