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TreQ Builds Multi-Vendor Quantum System in Three Months for Pilot

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April 23, 2026 by Ivy Delaney

TreQ has designed, built, and deployed a fully operational, multi-vendor quantum computing testbed in three months, a fast turnaround for a system of this complexity. The Open-Architecture Quantum (OAQ) Testbed, now in use as part of Innovate UK’s Quantum Mission Pilot, supports eight distinct computing configurations within a single three-rack footprint through software switching, eliminating the need for hardware adjustments. This flexibility was achieved by integrating two options each for QPU, control hardware, and calibration software, coordinating components from multiple suppliers and validating performance across diverse setups. “Open architecture quantum requires systems engineering to define interfaces, validate integration, and operate at system scale,” said Mandy Birch, Founder and CEO of TreQ. “With the OAQ Testbed in operation, we’ve demonstrated that capital-efficient, flexible quantum infrastructure can be built and operated today.”

Multi-Vendor OAQ Testbed Deployed in Oxfordshire, UK

This rapid turnaround highlights a new approach to building flexible quantum infrastructure, operating independent processor, control, and software layers through well-defined interfaces. The system’s ability to support multiple configurations without hardware changes is a key benefit; the full configuration can be switched via software, enabling performance assessment in diverse contexts. This interoperability is facilitated by a TreQ-led consortium’s development of an open-source interface specification for vendor-interchangeable low-level integration, already incorporated into commercial offerings from Q-CTRL and Qruise. Alex Shih, VP of Product at Q-CTRL, emphasized the system’s potential to streamline application development and optimize performance, stating, “Interoperability and autonomy are key to deployability.”

Novera QPU & Interfaces Enable System Portability

The current push for scalable quantum computing increasingly focuses on system-level integration, yet achieving true portability across diverse hardware remains a significant hurdle. Many early systems are effectively locked into fixed configurations, limiting future upgrades and hindering broader adoption. This is accomplished via software switching, eliminating the need for physical hardware adjustments, a feat previously difficult to achieve in quantum infrastructure. Rigetti’s CEO, Dr. Subodh Kulkarni, highlighted the Novera QPU’s role, stating, “The Novera QPU is designed for modularity, enabling ease of testing and integrating with new configurations and architectures.” This emphasis on open interfaces extends to an open-source specification developed with partners like Oxford Ionics and Qruise, ensuring solution portability and wider market reach for integrated technologies; Qruise’s Chief Product Officer, Anurag Saha Roy, confirmed that “The specification enables our AI-powered calibration technology to be deployed across more backends.”

Open architecture quantum requires systems engineering to define interfaces, validate integration, and operate at system scale. It is much more than assembling components from multiple vendors.

Mandy Birch, Founder and CEO of TreQ

TreQ is demonstrating the practical benefits of open architecture quantum computing with a testbed capable of rapidly shifting between system configurations. This approach extends infrastructure lifespan and improves return on investment by enabling upgrades and the incorporation of new technologies as they become available. Partner companies also laud the OAQ Testbed’s success; Dr. Subodh Kulkarni, Rigetti CEO, noted that validating the Novera QPU in different configurations provides insight into system-level design requirements for open architecture systems.

With the OAQ Testbed in operation, we’ve demonstrated that capital-efficient, flexible quantum infrastructure can be built and operated today.

Mandy Birch, Founder and CEO of TreQ
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Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney has been working with neural networks and machine learning since the mid-nineties, back when a couple of hidden layers and a long afternoon of training counted as ambitious. She has watched the field go from academic curiosity to the thing quietly running underneath everything, and she brings that long view to quantum computing. For Quantum Zeitgeist she covers the ground where the two fields meet. That means quantum machine learning and the variational algorithms it leans on, and it also means the less glamorous but more interesting story of classical machine learning already doing real work inside quantum machines, decoding error-correcting codes, calibrating noisy hardware and learning the error models that simulators depend on. She writes about the hardware those algorithms have to run on too, and about the post-quantum cryptography scramble that the same hardware has set off. Her stories typically start with the paper, whether that is peer-reviewed work, conference proceedings or an arXiv preprint, with the source linked so you can hold a claim up against the research it came from. She is unimpressed by benchmarks that will not say what they beat, and by demonstrations that only work in the press release.

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