Coherence Engine

Coherence Engine was named on 16 April 2026 in the inaugural DeepTech Catalyst Quantum (DTC Quantum) cohort at Harwell, run by UKRI STFC and the National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC). The programme provides £50,000 to £100,000 in R&D funding, 50 hours of business support, and investor introductions — the first structured commercial output of the UK's £2bn ProQure quantum commitment.

Coherence Engine is a UK software startup building quantum control-system software: the classical software layer that sits between user workloads and the physical hardware of a quantum processor, translating high-level instructions into the precise electrical pulses, microwave signals, or optical sequences that manipulate qubits. Control software is hardware-agnostic by design, making Coherence Engine's stack potentially applicable across superconducting, trapped-ion, and photonic quantum platforms. This cross-platform applicability matters because no single qubit technology has yet established dominance.

Quantum control software is a cross-cutting enabler: it determines gate Fidelity, calibration speed, and the practical overhead of running a quantum workload. As hardware improves, the bottleneck shifts increasingly to the control layer. Coherence Engine's position in the DTC Quantum cohort signals UKRI's recognition that the UK's quantum advantage depends on the software stack as much as the hardware, and the 18-month private follow-on test will determine whether that assessment attracts venture capital.