What sets Orca Computing apart from other quantum technology developers is its use of fibre optics and photonics to overcome one of the key challenges facing the sector – the disruption that can be caused by outside forces such as magnetic fields and thermal energy on qubits, the building blocks of quantum computing.
“What you need for a quantum computer to be really effective is an object that is super-isolated,” explained Richard Murray, Orca’s co-founder and chief executive. “It must be non-interacting with everything around it: that is the reason you often need to cool the objects down to super-low temperatures – otherwise you put an electron in a circuit and you get bombarded with tons of thermal noise.”
Rather than using electrons, as quantum computers being developed by the likes of Google do, Orca’s machine relies on photons – particles of light. “Light is great because it does not really interact with anything: you can pass a single photon down an optical fibre and it just does not change,” Murray added. “That is the reason photons carry internet traffic: they give you this super-isolated performance. This is what you need to create and maintain quantum states and quantum information, which is the basis of a quantum computer.”
The foundation of Orca’s approach is its quantum memory device, which allows the spinout’s technology to be based on optical fibres and telecoms equipment. This should help to overcome the hardware challenges facing many quantum computing businesses. “It means we do not have to design and manufacture really specialist components,” Murray said. “A lot of other companies rely on nanofabrication and etching of chips; our approach means we can us an off-the-shelf telecoms laser, and connect it with a bunch of optical fibres using some non-specialist components. This means the system can be built much more flexibly and with a lot less money.”
After completing his PhD in quantum technologies at University of Southampton, Murray worked for technology consultancy TTP before moving on to Innovate UK to help develop the agency’s quantum computing projects. This brought him into contact with Prof Ian Walmsley and Josh Nunn, who were working in quantum technologies and photonics at Oxford.
“The idea of applying light to quantum computing made a lot of business sense,” Murray noted, “and the technology Walmsley and Nunn were working on excited me. But a lot of the reason I decided to set up Orca with them was related to Walmsley and Nunn as people: a lot of academics do not realise the value of outsiders – non-technical people – coming into the business and running it.
“They were full-time academics, but rather than them getting in the way and inhibiting the growth of the company so they could stay involved, they were happy for me to work with them to get Orca off the ground.”
Murray claimed that a lot of academics saw spinouts as “a way to get their research funded”. He added: “Many of them think they should own a lot of the company even though they are not devoting a lot of time to it.”
Orca was set up in late 2019 with £1.5m ($2m) in pre-seed funding from Oxford Science Enterprises, the investment company established by University of Oxford. Orca’s approach to fundraising involved quite a steep learning curve, however, Murray admitted. “In the early days we were naïve about how we presented our business that to investors. We said, we are a great team, we have got a fantastic idea, give us some money please. Luckily, I think early-stage investors know people will be in that position and are a bit more sympathetic.”
Orca is now working on its series A round, with the aim of raising £10m. “At that point you have to grow up quite a lot. Investors will ask you for a list of milestones: the revenues you are going to generate, the customers you have contacted.”
The spinout has been talking to “anyone who will listen” about its next round, including angels, UK institutional investors and even some funds in the US. “We are too early for the really big funds, but it is good to get our name registered with them,” Murray suggested. “We are still pre-revenue, but we are building quantum computers which will have a revolutionary impact eventually when we get there – and that means investors do not treat us the same as a software company, for whom all of the challenges are related to onboarding customers and customer retention.
“Instead, for us all the risk is on the technical side. So, we do not spend as much time as other companies focusing on how much customer traction we can demonstrate.”
Orca expects its main route to market to be through the suppliers of computing systems such as data centres, rather than by marketing directly to end users such as drug-discovery companies or banks. At the moment, however, one of its biggest challenges lies in recruitment.
“We make life a little bit difficult for ourselves as we only pick really good and capable people,” Murray pondered. “That means not just going through your PhD, but showing you worked hard and delivered some results.
“Some of the most specialist roles that we have not hired are a combination of product people – who have brought products to market – and are not terrified by quantum and photonics. But it can be hard to find anyone in that overlap.”
The UK’s immigration rules have not helped: Murray asserted the visa process in Britain had practically ground to a halt at present. “But we grew up in covid times, and I think the world has changed: Zoom is a fact of life now, it allows you to connect to people easily. We currently have subcontractors in France and India due to visa issues, but we find it works.”
Orca has also benefited from its links to SETsquared, the enterprise partnership of the universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey. “We collaborate a lot with different universities because there is a lot of challenging work we need done but we do not have the bandwidth to do ourselves,” Murray revealed. “And SETsquared have been great: they have helped us streamline those interactions. What is particularly great is that they are very commercially minded: they know the journey that startups are going on in a way universities often do not.”
Murray pointed out that the most meaningful impact SETsquared had had on Orca’s development was its assistance in developing proposals for grant funding from Innovate UK.
“SETsquared got people in to read the proposals and help us write them – and even though I had worked at Innovate UK, there were several pieces of advice that really helped.” This recently resulted in Orca having a £10m-plus grant approved for a collaborative project involving 15 research institution partners.
