Chris Ballance did a PhD in trapped-ion physics at the University of Oxford, where he met Tom Harty. Trapped ions make very good qubits, but the control systems around them were bulky and hard to scale.
In 2019 the pair founded Oxford Ionics as a University of Oxford spinout, backed early by Oxford Science Enterprises. Ballance is CEO and Harty is CTO. Their idea was to run the ions with conventional silicon chips.
Rivals include Quantinuum, IonQ, IBM, Google Quantum AI, PsiQuantum, Rigetti and Quantum Motion.
On 9 June 2025 IonQ announced it would acquire Oxford Ionics for $1.075 billion, $1.065 billion in stock and $10 million in cash. The deal completed in September 2025. The University of Oxford calls it the highest value acquisition of any of its quantum spinouts.