After hearing about OQC’s mission, Mullally, whose background lies in the UK Prime Minister’s Office & Cabinet Office as well as with the technology departments of Accenture and PwC, knew it was something he had to be a part of. “My reason for joining OQC was an awareness of the significant transformation that quantum will bring to our lives and wanting to be a part of it at a company that I believe is pushing the boundaries of what is possible in quantum.” This is precisely what OQC is achieving.

From academia to industry

As previously mentioned, OQC’s origins lie within Oxford University, a hub for innovation in the UK. The initial ideas for OQC were the brainchild of Dr Peter Leek’s pioneering core patent, the Coaxmon.

“This was developed within their world-leading physics department and the unique design became the world’s simplest superconducting quantum architecture and helped to spearhead the enterprise-ready solutions we have today. I am delighted to say that Peter has joined us as Chief Scientific Officer and a core part of our leadership team,” explained Mullaly.

Now, OQC is at the point where it can deliver these ideas to customers, building quantum computers that are accessible and secure. Comments Mullaly: “Our mission to put quantum in the hands of humanity drives everything that we do. By achieving our mission, we believe that enterprises will make significant advances using our technology, from tackling climate change to the development of new drugs for currently incurable disease.”

The team making the magic happen

Given its origins at Oxford University as a spinout, OQC started off as a very small team back in 2017. Since these initial days, the team has steadily grown into the 100+ strong one we see today. Mullaly highlights: “2022 was a remarkable year for team growth at OQC where we effectively doubled in size. Throughout 2023/24 we have continued this trajectory, with a team of more than 100 people today.” The consensus at OQC is that this is only the beginning, and as the market for quantum continues to grow, so too will the team at OQC.

Overcoming quantum challenges

When working with quantum at the cutting edge of technology, there are bound to be challenges to overcome, complexity of the technology, challenges within the broader industry, and commercialisation being some of the biggest. This is something that Mullaly and OQC have had to tackle head-on: “The biggest challenges have been removing barriers to access. While the industry is also facing its own challenges to progression, we have looked outwardly to understand what the challenges are for customers who could benefit from early experimentation with quantum technologies. Access was by far the key barrier, and we have taken a significant step forward to address this issue by deploying to commercial data centres.

“A moment that spearheaded this decision was the views of one of our large customers who stated that ‘our data cannot leave our four walls,’ and on that basis, they could not run anything meaningful on quantum computers today. They were not referring to their physical walls but their digital infrastructure. We are very proud of being the first company in the world to deploy to a data centre and we have opened up the possibility for our customers to access quantum easily and, most importantly, securely.”

Achieving the cutting-edge

“It’s been an incredible six years for OQC already. Our team built the UK’s first superconducting quantum computer for starters,” rejoices Mullaly. As they say, the bigger the challenge, the sweeter the reward – and OQC are now tasting the fruits of its labour. “In April 2021, we launched Europe’s first commercially available Quantum Compute-as-a-Service platform. Then, at the end of 2021, we also launched our 8-qubit device, OQC Lucy, which launched on AWS in 2022. Then in 2022, we partnered with Centresquare (previously Cyxtera) to integrate our quantum computer into their co-location data centre which was a world’s first.” These have been some of the most pioneering steps in accessible quantum computing in recent years and something that the OQC team take great pride in.

But that isn’t all, in 2023, OQC managed to install one of its quantum computers into the Equinix IBX Data Centre in Tokyo as a part of its mission to open access to enterprise-ready quantum to businesses globally. For OQC, this is the next step in achieving commercially accessible quantum computing.

The next step

OQC has no plans to sit still now, at the cusp of making its mission a reality, with its next key focus being to continue to development of its technology and make big leaps toward fault-tolerant quantum computing.

“We have a very exciting 18 months ahead and we are looking forward to showcasing to the market significant advances in our technology,” finishes Mullaly.

This article originally appeared in the July/August issue of Startups Magazine. Click here to subscribe