Anglo-Finnish Oxford University quantum spinout QuantrolOx raises €12M

QuantrolOx, an Oxford University spinout with roots in Finland, has raised €12 million in a Series A round. IW Capital led the deal, with the European Innovation Council Fund and Transpose Capital also coming in.

The company is building software for quantum computers, with a focus on the messy job of tuning and control. That matters because, by its own description, this is one of the sector’s current bottlenecks. The pitch is simple enough: make the hardware easier to run, and quantum systems become more useful faster.

QuantrolOx says its software is designed to work across different quantum hardware architectures. It also points to published research showing machine-learning-tuned quantum devices were adjusted in under 70 minutes, ahead of the best human benchmark.

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

The new money will go toward commercial growth and expansion efforts in the US. Existing backers include Hoxton Ventures and Hermann Hauser, the Arm co-founder. And like a lot of quantum companies right now, QuantrolOx is selling not just a product, but a route to making the whole field less fiddly.