Oxford Ionics
Trapped-ion quantum computing built on silicon-CMOS chips with on-chip electronic ion control (EIC) — integrated microwave antennae replace the bulk laser stacks normally used to drive trapped-ion gates, enabling copy-paste scaling using existing semiconductor manufacturing. Spun out of the David Lucas / Chris Ballance ion-trap group at the University of Oxford in 2019 by Chris Ballance and Tom Harty. Reports 99.9992% single-qubit and 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelities on a chip-trap Ca+ system without ground-state cooling (arXiv 2510.17286). Acquired by IonQ in September 2025 for ~USD 1.075B.
Timeline
Current flagship
Oxford Ionics chip-trap QPU — silicon-CMOS ion-trap chip with on-chip EIC (barium / calcium)
Milestones
- 2025-10arXiv preprint reports two-qubit gates with >99.99% fidelity on a chip-trap Ca+ system without ground-state cooling
- 2025-09IonQ completes acquisition of Oxford Ionics — 26,622,077 IonQ shares plus $10M cash; Oxford operations to remain in the UK under UK government national-security undertakings
- 2025-09UK government issues final order clearing the IonQ acquisition with conditions on UK retention of technology and talent
- 2025-06IonQ announces agreement to acquire Oxford Ionics for $1.075B (~$1.065B IonQ stock + ~$10M cash)
- 2025-02Nature 638, 383 — Main et al. demonstrate distributed quantum computing across a 2 m optical network link, running Grover's algorithm via teleported CZ between two trapped-ion modules using 88Sr+ network ions heralding entanglement and 43Ca+ circuit ions (collaboration with the Oxford ion-trap group)
- 2024-07arXiv preprint of scalable, high-fidelity all-electronic control of trapped-ion qubits — the underlying EIC architecture paper
- 2024-02arXiv preprint — robust and fast microwave-driven quantum logic for trapped-ion qubits (EIC physics)
- 2023-01£30M (~$36M) Series A led by Oxford Science Enterprises and Braavos Investment Partners with Lansdowne Partners
- 2020-06$3.77M seed round from Atmos Ventures, IP Group, Oxford Sciences Innovation
- 2019Company founded by Chris Ballance and Tom Harty as an Oxford spinout from the trapped-ion quantum computing group (David Lucas / Andrew Steane)
Roadmap
- 2027 Deliver 256-qubit chip-trap system as the first IonQ-Oxford-integrated product line under the merged roadmap source ↗
Capability details
Quantum computing
- Qubit type
- trapped-ion
- Physical qubits
- —
- Logical qubits
- 0
- 1Q gate fidelity
- 0.999992
- 2Q gate fidelity
- 0.9999
- T₁
- —
- T₂
- —
- EC code
- —
- Connectivity
- all-to-all
7 unverified fields
-
modalities.qc.physical_qubits_current -
modalities.qc.coherence_t1_ms -
modalities.qc.coherence_t2_ms -
modalities.qc.ec_code -
modalities.qc.gate_set -
modalities.qc.two_q_fidelity— 99.99% two-qubit fidelity is the headline figure from the Oct 2025 arXiv preprint (2510.17286); not yet peer-reviewed -
modalities.qc.one_q_fidelity— 99.9992% single-qubit fidelity quoted on the vendor technology page; underlying paper is 2402.12955 (arXiv, not peer-reviewed)
People
References
- paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08404-x Main et al., Nature 638, 383 (2025) — distributed Grover across two photonically-linked trapped-ion modules (Sr+/Ca+ mixed species)
- preprint https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.07694 Scalable all-electronic control of trapped-ion qubits (EIC architecture)
- preprint https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.17286 Trapped-ion two-qubit gates with >99.99% fidelity without ground-state cooling
- press https://www.ionq.com/news/ionq-announces-agreement-to-acquire-oxford-ionics-accelerating-path-to-pioneering IonQ acquisition announcement, June 2025
- filing https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/acquisition-of-oxford-ionics-limited-by-ionq-inc-notice-of-final-order/acquisition-of-oxford-ionics-limited-by-ionq-inc-notice-of-final-order UK government final order clearing the acquisition with conditions