Hélène and Ilana...

...two entrepreneurs you absolutely should know about

In late October, I had the pleasure of attending

Eric Slesinger

’s inaugural ‘European Defence Investors Summit’ in Madrid. Over a day and a half, entrepreneurs, investors, and serving officials and officers from across Europe met, mingled, and made plans to expand the scale and range of investment into the technology innovations that will contribute to the long term security of our western democracies.

We heard from many impressive speakers including Sir Alex Younger, former Chief of MI6, and Nand Mulchandani, the current CTO of the CIA. But for me, most impressive of all was the conversation between Hélène Huby, CEO of The Exploration Company, and Dr Ilana Wisby, CEO of Oxford Quantum Circuits.

An admission: I had not heard of either company, or their CEOs before attending the conference. And very quickly it became clear that this was a major oversight on my part.

The Exploration Company

How many companies, let alone European companies, state that their mission is “to make space exploration affordable, sustainable and open”? Knowing nothing about the company before the panel, I will admit to a big double-take when I heard Hélène spell out this mission at the beginning of the discussion. From the off, Hélène was measured, articulate, and hugely persuasive about her phenomenally ambitious and challenging goal. The small matter of having raised €45m+ in funding, and securing €200m+ in contracts within 3 years of launch was disclosed without the least fanfare. Hélène and her team are building modular, re-usable orbit vehicles that can re-supply Space Stations, spend months in orbit, and potentially enable the defence of high-value space-based assets.

Oxford Quantum Circuits

I had met Ilana briefly at the introductory reception for the Summit, so knew a little about OQC before the panel. Nonetheless, I was struck by her poise in presenting the work of her team, many of whom are world-leaders in this highly technical and specialised field. Like Hélène, Ilana has raised a significant sum, largely from Japanese investors, as OQC moves rapidly from research and development to growth, building the world’s first commercially-available quantum computer.

OQC had a big day today at the UK Global Investment Summit, where they announced a £100m Series B. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak got to spend a few minutes with Ilana, and the Secretary of State for Tech got a demo. Perhaps the cat is now out of the bag, but Ilana and her team remain largely unheralded beyond the small community of quantum technology researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors. The fact that Japan is her biggest source of capital should tell us something.

Why am I writing about these two pioneering entrepreneurs? Well, as I have argued in a couple of recent essays, I believe a small number of ‘Red Shift’ technologies are fundamental to the long-term economic and national security of our western democracies. Quantum is one such technology, and the conquest of space is likely to be a major new area of (extra-) geopolitical tension and conflict in the near future. Companies like OQC and The Exploration Company will play a critical part in building and sustaining a technology advantage over our adversaries, and the founders of these companies should be celebrated.

I am also a bit puzzled that, at a time when grand-standing entrepreneurs at other technology companies garner wall-to-wall coverage, Hélène and Ilana are not already household names. I look forward to reading and hearing much more about them in the months ahead.