Latest news from companies in our innovation centres
March 16, 2023
The anticipation of Spring brings new energy. This this was apparent at the two ‘Big Lunches’ held recently at the Oxford Centre for Innovation and the Wood Centre for Innovation in February, when companies gathered to meet, connect, and relax over delicious lunch (see photo above). We have caught up with many and found out about the plentiful progress, developments and successes of companies in our centres over the past months, which we are pleased to share.
Successful fundraises
Lumai (formerly OxONN), based in our Wood Centre for Innovation, was awarded a £1.1 million Smart Grant from Innovate UK in February. The grant will support the commercialisation of its ground-breaking work in optical network training and deep optics for faster, more efficient computing for the next generation artificial intelligence. They will now be able to create advanced optical computing processors to remove dependency on electronic processing. Read more about Lumai’s work in our ‘Five Minutes with’ CEO Tim Weil. On the award of the Smart Grant, Tim said, “We’re excited to be bringing Lumai’s game-changing technology to the world, and we look forward to making our mark on the UK market and beyond.”
The Lumai team
QuantrolOx, based in the Oxford Centre for Innovation, has raised a new seed round of €3.5 million to bring their new product – software that brings automation to qubit control – to market. The round is led by deep tech VC Voima Ventures, with participation from existing investors, such as Nielsen Ventures and Hoxton Ventures, and new investors 2xN Ventures, Serendipity Capital and Oxford Science Enterprises. It has also received the prestigious European Innovation Council Accelerator financing package of €10.5 million and is mentioned as a company of strategic importance to Europe.
Product development
Earlier this month, Quantum Dice announced a new addition to their Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG) product line-up – VERTEX – boasting the world’s fastest QRNG, best-in-class security and compactness that, says CEO and Co-Founder Ramy Shelbaya, “showcases the incredible scaling potential of our DISCTM technology”.
QuantrolOx generated much excitement when they previewed their Quantum Edge 1.0 software at the American Physical Society meeting in Las Vegas on 5 March. Their software, automating qubit control, will reduce the frequent expert human intervention needed in quantum computing so that quantum computers can be scaled up. It will improve stability and sustained gate performance for superconducting qubits.
Expansion
Since we shared the news of Samsara Therapeutics‘ expansion into new lab space at the end of 2022 (see story here), work has commenced at the Wood Centre for Innovation to customise space for the expansion of Helio Display Materials.
New names
As companies grow, develop and refine their products and brand, we have seen a few change their names and refresh their brands. ColdQuanta in the Oxford Centre for Innovation have rebranded as Infleqtion, the new name reflecting a turning point in the business. Lumai, in the Wood Centre for Innovation, were previously known as OxONN. The name Lumai represents their work in deep optics (lumen being a measure of light) and their goals within the realm of artificial intelligence (AI). OxDx in the Wood Centre for Innovation have rebranded as PicturaBio, a name that reflects their work in using digital imaging to identify pathogens of infectious disease.
Anniversaries
We’ve recently celebrated anniversaries of a number of companies in our centres. At the Wood Centre for Innovation, we celebrate one year with RedshiftBio, PicturaBio and Lumai in March. At the Oxford Centre for Innovation, we celebrate one year with QuantrolOx, Kaldi Finances, this great adventure and Fluid Gravity Engineering. Other established clients also celebrate anniversaries in our centres: Optellum, Createc, Sherwood Scientific, Stockopedia, Euro Intelligence, Infleqtion (ColdQuanta) and Habitat Energy.
Awards and other news
Quantum Dice co-founders Ramy Shelbaya, Wenmiao Yu and George Dunlop were selected to feature in the Forbes ’30 under 30’ in the Technology category (see here). This young company of remarkable individuals has progressed rapidly at the Oxford Centre for Innovation.
Helio Display Materials in the Wood Centre for Innovation have been named as a cofinitive #21toWatch 2023 award winner. This campaign celebrates new entities at the cutting-edge of innovation and entrepreneurship across Cambridge and the East of England.
The Oxford Centre for Innovation team of Curiosity Software shared news that the company was shortlisted for “Best Use of Technology in a Project” at the 2022 North American Software Testing Awards. This project is a collaboration with social impact education innovator, EVERFI. Read more here. They have been expanding their US based team, and developing a new range of content, such as this video series.
In December, Optellum was recognised as one of the 150 most promising digital health start-ups of the year by CB Insights, a market research and business analytics firm.
Createc in the Oxford Centre for Innovation have been out and about again with our favourite robot dog, Spot, this time to London for Nuclear Week in Parliament at the beginning of February, to discuss the role of new technologies like Spot in ensuring safe and efficient operations in the nuclear industry.
Throwback to when Spot took to the streets of Oxford.
Human Centric Drug Discovery in the Wood Centre for Innovation continue to strengthen networks, with the launch in December of a stem cell networking series, sponsored by Thermo Fisher Scientific. The series of networking sessions is designed to bring together Oxford-based biotech companies and academic researchers working in the field of iPSC-based disease modelling.
Printpool, based in the Oxford Centre for Innovation, have a new training course in 3D printing aimed at mechanical engineers, product designers, physicists, industrial designers, and other roles that design physical components and products. Find out more here.
Inviting start-ups to join our Oxford Centre for Innovation community
As companies grow and move on, space occasionally becomes available for start-ups to set up their home in our centres. With the success of companies in our Oxford Centre for Innovation and their need for bigger spaces, limited office and work space will become available in the coming months in the Oxford Centre for Innovation. We welcome enquiries: https://www.ocfi.co.uk/contact/
