An Anglo-Finnish University of Oxford quantum spinout has raised €12m in a funding round, it said today, as investment in the quantum sector continues to heat up.

The Series A funding round in QuantrolOx was led by IW Capital, an early stage investor, with the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund and Transpose Capital also investing.

In essence, QuantrolOx, which is headquartered in Finland, builds software that helps quantum computers work efficiently.

Its software, designed to work across different quantum hardware architectures, automates the tuning and control of quantum computers, which the startup says is a current bottleneck in quantum.

It pointed to research published showing that its machine learning tuned quantum devices in under 70 minutes, outperforming the best human benchmark.

The startup was founded by Vishal Chatrath, CEO, a former Nokia executive; professor Andrew Briggs, emeritus professor of nanomaterials at Oxford University; doctor Natalia Ares, a research fellow at Oxford University and a serial deeptech entrepreneur and Dominic Lennon, chief product officer, who helped develop the platform following his DPhil at Oxford.

It will use the funding to speed up commercial growth as well as funding its efforts in the US. The spinout's existing investors include Hoxton Ventures and Arm co-founder Hermann Hauser.

Chatrath, co-founder and CEO, QuantrolOx, says: “Every industry is built on its tools and its people. QuantrolOx is building the foundations of the quantum industry: Our tools industrialise quantum hardware and train the people to run it. With IW Capital and the EIC Fund behind us, we are setting the standards and accelerating the path to practical quantum computing.”