The world is buying Britain’s brains. Isomorphic Labs, an AI drug-discovery company spun out of Google’s DeepMind, is in talks to raise another $2bn in funding from investors led by Thrive Capital. Quantum Motion, a spinout from Oxford University and UCL that builds quantum computers with silicon chips, closed a $160m financing round this week with funds from EU-backed tech fund Kembara and the British Business Bank (BBB). It is the largest early-stage raise in the UK’s quantum sector to date. But will betting on technological moonshots of this kind actually transform Britain’s growth prospects? “If the UK is going to build its first trillion-pound company, it will come out of one of the deep tech university ecosystems,” says Ed Bussey, chief executive of Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE). The firm – in which Oxford University holds a 5% “golden share” – is an early investor in Quantum Motion. Britain’s AI sector is gathering steam. But quantum – the mind-bending quest to build an exponentially more powerful computer that can instantly deliver scientific leaps forward in everything from GPS to drug discovery – hasn’t yet achieved commercial use. The geostrategic and financial stakes for Britain are huge. The UK government estimates quantum breakthroughs could boost productivity by 7% over the next two decades, creating more than 100,000 jobs and adding the combined annual output of Wales and Northern Ireland to GDP. It has announced more than £2bn of support for the sector, including funding from the BBB. “Despite the interest from the giants – Google and so on – there’s still uncertainty as to which approach is going to win overall,” says Quantum Motion’s co-founder John Morton. “There are lots of opportunities for companies, even at an early stage, to pick the right approach and get a really strong position in