Oxford Ionics and Iceberg Quantum Partner to Accelerate Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing

OXFORD, UK, 17th July, 2025: Oxford Ionics, a leader in trapped-ion quantum computing, today announced that it has partnered with Iceberg Quantum, a quantum architecture company specialising in Quantum Low-Density Parity-Check (qLDPC) codes. 

When building quantum computers, ensuring error rates are low enough to perform accurate calculations is of the utmost importance. Broadly speaking, errors can be managed in two ways: by engineering low error rates to begin with, and by applying Quantum Error Correction (QEC) – a software protocol that helps correct errors in the hardware. 

QEC is, without a doubt, a critical technology to building fault-tolerant quantum computers. By encoding logical qubits into a larger number of physical qubits, errors can be detected and corrected on the fly without disturbing the encoded information. This enables the implementation of long, complex quantum algorithms capable of unlocking commercially-valuable applications. 

Several QEC codes have been developed, each with unique strengths. The most well-known include the Shor code, the Steane code and the surface code. The latter is the most widely-used QEC approach today –  it’s robust, well-researched, and has a high threshold for error correction, making it the go-to solution for near-term quantum hardware. However, surface codes come with significant hardware overhead: hundreds or even thousands of physical qubits are needed to protect a single logical qubit. This significantly limits how quickly one can scale up quantum computers to solve real-world problems.

Quantum Low-Density Parity-Check (qLDPC) codes represent a more recent and highly promising class of QEC codes. qLDPC codes combine powerful error protection with dramatically lower qubit overhead, thanks to their sparse and non-local structure. Recent breakthroughs have shown that qLDPC codes can achieve the holy grail of quantum coding: constant rate and linear distance, meaning stronger protection against errors with far fewer extra qubits as the system grows. Their structure also lends itself to fast, parallel decoding—critical for real-time quantum computing.

Compared to other qubit modalities, trapped-ion hardware is uniquely well-suited to qLDPC codes owing to its long-range connectivity, excellent coherence times, and higher gate fidelities. These features enable the non-local interactions that qLDPC codes rely on and allow the codes to operate in the low physical-error-rate regime where their advantages are greatest.

Based in Sydney Australia, Iceberg Quantum is at the forefront of qLDPC code development. Its advancements in qLDPC-based architectures are accelerating the route to high-value applications for quantum computing, whilst requiring considerably less hardware overhead. Notably, members of Iceberg Quantum pioneered the first general-purpose methods for performing targeted, universal logic gates with qLDPC codes, which was the critical theoretical advancement that enables practical computation with these codes. 

Oxford Ionics is the ideal candidate for qLDPC codes, owing to its all-to-all connectivity and record-breaking fidelities. The company currently has the lowest error rates of any quantum computing platform on the market, with the world records in all three of the key fidelity metrics: single-qubit gate fidelity, two-qubit gate fidelity, and quantum state preparation and measurement (SPAM). As part of Oxford Ionics’ participation in Stage A of the United States’ DARPA Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, the two companies have been working together on a design of fault-tolerant quantum architecture that combines Oxford Ionics’ leading trapped-ion technology with Iceberg Quantum’s qLDPC codes. 

Oxford Ionics was co-founded in 2019 by Dr Tom Harty and Dr Chris Ballance who both hold world records in quantum breakthroughs. The team includes 80 global experts across physics, quantum architecture, engineering and software and expects to triple headcount over the next 18 months as the business scales internationally. Oxford Ionics has raised £37 million to date with investors including Braavos, OSE, Lansdowne Partners, Prosus Ventures, 2xN, and Hermann Hauser (founder of chip giant ARM). In 2024, Oxford Ionics rapidly commercialised its technology, selling full-stack quantum computers to the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC) and Germany’s Cyberagentur. The company also holds the world records in the three most important metrics for quantum performance: single- and two-qubit gate fidelity and quantum state preparation and measurement (SPAM). For more information, visit our website www.oxionics.com

Iceberg Quantum is a quantum architecture company designing the next generation of fault-tolerant architectures based on LDPC codes. Founded in 2024 by Felix Thomsen, Sam Smith and Larry Cohen— PhD graduates from the University of Sydney’s world-leading quantum error correction group led by Prof. Stephen Bartlett— Iceberg is developing architectures that reduce the overhead for quantum error correction by over an order of magnitude, making useful quantum computing possible much sooner and with far fewer qubits. Backed by leading global VCs Blackbird Ventures and LocalGlobe, Iceberg is rapidly building the world’s best fault tolerance research lab, and partnering with leading quantum hardware companies to turn cutting-edge research into real-world implementations. For more information, visit www.iceberg-quantum.com.