Cambridge, UK – April 22nd, 2025: Riverlane, the global leader in quantum error correction, is proud to announce its participation in three pioneering projects selected by the UK’s Department of Science, Technology, and Innovation (DSIT) and Innovate UK as part of the Quantum Missions Pilot programme.
The UK’s Quantum Missions Pilot programme was launched to accelerate progress in quantum computing and networking by funding ambitious, collaborative projects that tackle key technological barriers. These projects support the UK’s National Quantum Strategy and its five long-term Quantum Missions, which aim to drive the large-scale commercialisation and adoption of quantum technologies.
The three projects Riverlane is supporting aim to advance the frontiers of quantum computing by addressing quantum's defining challenge: quantum error correction (QEC)
- Advancing QEC on Superconducting Hardware (with Rigetti): Riverlane is leading Quantum Error Correction (QEC) experiments as part of a £3.5 million project to benchmark and enhance QEC capabilities on Rigetti's upgraded 36-qubit superconducting quantum computer hosted at the National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC). As part of project, Riverlane’s QEC stack will be integrated with Rigetti’s next-generation control system to improve key performance metrics - including throughput, latency, and decoding accuracy - essential for real-time error correction and fault-tolerant quantum computing.
- The UK's First Operational QEC Testbed (with Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC): Riverlane is supporting OQC with the development of the UK’s first QEC-enabled quantum testbed in a commercial data centre, set to launch by March 2026. This testbed will enhance QEC through hardware advancements and offer external users access, thereby strengthening the UK's quantum ecosystem. It utilises OQC's innovative Dimon qubit architecture, which improves superconducting qubit stability by 20 times and vastly reduces the hardware overhead of error correction, alongside Riverlane's leakage error detection to boost performance and efficiency. Users will be able to experiment with logical qubits in a secure environment, explore noise variations, and connect theoretical and practical QEC.
- Q-Surge to upgrade NQCC Testbed with Advanced 2D Ion Traps (with Oxford Ionics): As a key member of the Q-Surge consortium, Riverlane is working closely with Oxford Ionics to optimise the architecture of its ‘Quartet’ quantum computer for QEC. The project will support critical design decisions to ensure the system remains scalable and high-performance, without compromising on speed or fidelity. This is part of the wider Q-Surge project to enhance Oxford Ionics’ proprietary 2D ion-trap technology, advancing the capabilities of their NQCC testbed.
“Riverlane is honoured to collaborate with these world-class partners to help realise the UK's Mission 1: achieving one trillion error-free quantum operations by 2035” said Steve Brierley, CEO & Founder of Riverlane. “Our expert team collaborates closely with all our partners and across all major qubit types, addressing errors in today’s small quantum computers while ensuring a seamless scale-up for tomorrow’s larger systems.”
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About Riverlane:
Riverlane’s mission is to make quantum computing useful, sooner. This will transform the future of computing and start an era of human progress as significant as the digital and industrial revolutions. Achieving this requires a 10,000x reduction in the system errors that quickly overwhelm all quantum computers, today. Riverlane is building Deltaflow, the quantum error correction (QEC) stack, to solve this problem across all qubit types. Having assembled the world’s leading experts in quantum error correction and chip design, Riverlane is now supplying over half of the world’s quantum computing companies. At Deltaflow’s core is the world’s most powerful quantum error decoder. Deltaflow is powered by a new class of patented QEC semiconductors designed and built by Riverlane.