Oxford Ionics today announced its development roadmap to achieve scalable fault-tolerant quantum computing – outlining three short-term phases on the company’s path to delivering 1M+ qubit devices.
Oxford Ionics’ development roadmap focuses on three strategic phases: Foundation, Enterprise-grade, and Value at scale. Each development phase builds upon the last, enabling further scalability and increased performance. Notably, the phases are marked by the development of quantum systems that push the boundaries of what’s possible – not just in qubit count, but in achieving the industry’s lowest error rates of 10⁻⁴ across the largest number of physical qubits.
These low error rates are a crucial component of Oxford Ionics’ unmatched level of performance. For its Foundation and Enterprise-grade systems, low error rates power a far wider range of applications compared to other approaches on the market – fewer errors mean longer and more complex applications can run successfully. For its Value at scale systems, low error rates empower Oxford Ionics to solve meaningful problems on devices with up to 10,000x fewer physical qubits than competing platforms – allowing it to rapidly deliver reliable, high performance systems to its customers.
Foundation
Currently available for delivery either on-premise or via cloud access, Oxford Ionics’ Foundation systems contain 16 – 64 qubits at 99.99% fidelity. These quantum computers allow organisations to research quantum algorithms, Quantum Error Correction (QEC), and early applications to fields like security and defence, pharmaceuticals, and materials science. With over $20m in sales in 2024, Oxford Ionics has rapidly commercialised these devices to customers including the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre and Germany’s Cyberagentur.
Enterprise-grade
With its Enterprise-grade systems, Oxford Ionics is developing 256-qubit quantum computers at 99.99% fidelity, which the company is selling to customers today. These ultra-high performing systems will begin to unlock early commercial value, yielding quantum use cases that surpass classical computing capabilities. This includes applications within advanced QEC research, the intersection of quantum and AI, and hybrid classical and quantum computing workflows through integrations with HPC data centres.
Value at scale
The development roadmap unveiled today also outlines Oxford Ionics’ plans to develop a 10,000+ high-fidelity qubit quantum processor, available for purchase in 2027. The Value at scale development phase builds off the work conducted in the Enterprise-grade period, enabling Oxford Ionics to scale its 256-qubit designs to 10,000+ qubits by replicating the design elements rather than reinventing. Whilst the company’s Enterprise-grade systems will unlock early applications that surpass classical computing capabilities, the Value at scale systems developed in 2027 will be capable of powering broad commercial value – yielding solutions to previously-unsolvable problems across a wide range of use cases.
The systems developed in each phase are data centre compatible, highly automated, and field upgradeable. In order for customers to upgrade to a higher performance system, they simply swap out the credit-card sized Quantum Processor Unit (QPU) – meaning the quantum computer’s power and performance can evolve as the organisation does.
All Oxford Ionics’ products rely on its proprietary technology, Electronic Qubit Control, which uses electronics instead of lasers to control its qubits. The benefits of this approach are twofold: first, it unlocks unprecedented scalability by enabling the company to produce its quantum chips via the existing semiconductor supply chain. Second, it has yielded the highest performing quantum platform in the world, with Oxford Ionics holding the world record in all three of the most important metrics of quantum computing performance.
Dr Chris Ballance, co-founder and CEO of Oxford Ionics, commented: “We are tremendously proud to outline our development roadmap today. Our team has always been driven by the firm conviction that powerful quantum computing will usher in an era where organisations can rewrite what’s possible and find solutions to otherwise unsolvable problems. The roadmap we’ve unveiled today combines scale and fidelity, essential ingredients to moving the field beyond proof of concept demonstrations and into real-world impact. We’re excited to continue putting these devices into the hands of end users, taking us one step closer to unlocking the power that quantum computing promises to deliver.”
