Quantum computer operating system builder Riverlane raises £15 million

Cambridge-based quantum engineering company Riverlane has raised £15 million in a Series B funding round. The new capital will help Riverlane continue work on its Deltaflow.OS solution, and according to the company is expected to see the company through to a cash flow break-even point. Since mid-2019, Riverland has raised approximately £34 million.

The Series B round was led by historical backers Molten Ventures and saw the participation of Altair, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners, and the National Security Strategic Investment Fund.

Ah, the qubit. If Tech.eu had a feature akin to Time magazine’s Person of the Year feature, the qubit would get my vote for this year. Or maybe it wouldn’t. But we’d have to destroy it to find out. Those of you paying attention will most certainly understand this paradox. 

For all the mysteries of the universe these seemingly miraculous two-state devices have to offer, they are rather delicate creatures. At present, quantum computers, the machines that utilise qubits at their most basic level of information, are only able to perform a few hundred operations before failure, due to the high error rate found in qubits.

The conundrum that Riverlane is working on solving is the ability to detect, diagnose, and correct quantum errors as they occur, thereby enabling quantum computers to move well beyond a few hundred error-free operations into the trillions of error-free operations.

Riverlane’s qubit Control and Decoding hardware and software solution, Deltaflow.OS is tackling this problem head on, and by the end of 2025, expects to develop its Decode solution into a chip-based ‘TeraQuOp’ decoder that is capable of processing up to 100TB of data per second. Yes, that’s terabytes per second.

“Solving quantum error correction, one of the defining scientific challenges of our times, will enable quantum computers to accurately simulate the true complexity of nature,” says Riverlane founder and CEO Steve Brierley. “Armed with useful quantum computers, humans will enter the Quantum Age, where we go from slow trial and error to solve complex problems to an era of rapid design using quantum computers. We haven’t even begun to imagine the many ways such technology will positively transform our world.”  

For more on Riverlane, see our exclusive interview with Chief Operating Officer, Dr. Rebecca Simmons.