News

Roundup of ten UK quantum startups, written in partnership with Parkwalk. ORCA's profile covers its room-temperature photonic PT Series, CUDA-Q integration, named customers and its staged funding approach, including the $15M Series A and the GXC photonics acquisition.

Researchers developed a hybrid quantum-classical AI system that designed immune-targeting peptides, with quantum-generated inputs improving peptide discovery for understudied HLA variants and producing laboratory-validated binders. The quantum-enhanced model generated more predicted strong-binding peptides than conventional approaches, with the largest improvements occurring for HLA variants that have limited training data.

The Technical University of Denmark team ran their generative AI model for predicting proteins in conjunction with a quantum computer built by British startup ORCA Computing. The researchers used this hybrid technique to generate novel peptides—short chains of amino acids—capable of binding to specific proteins in the body. Making the peptides in the laboratory and testing whether these would bind to the particular proteins showed the model produced more successful peptides than its classical counterpart, with the strongest improvements where training data was rare.

Interview with Richard Murray from Commercialising Quantum Global 2026. He calls PT-3 a "quantum advantage machine" for optimisation and generative AI, due later in 2026. Also covers the Japan deployment, the Digital Realty lab deal and ORCA's capital efficient funding stance.

Marks a Major Milestone in Hybrid Quantum–AI Deployment for Industrial Applications

PT Series showcased in production-grade AI infrastructure environment at Digital Realty’s new London Innovation Lab

This collaboration represents the first-time quantum computing is being integrated into industrial agentic AI systems for real-world process design and operation.

Quantum computing is often introduced as something fundamentally different from the systems that run today’s data centers. ORCA suggests another enlightening viewpoint.

The UK government, through early foresight and a strong innovation heritage, recognized an opportunity to become a global first-mover in a deep tech sector critical to both national security and economic growth.