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NQCP Spinout Pelagic Systems Announces Quantum Control Software
Pelagic Systems announced its launch as a spinout from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Quantum Computing Programme, describing a software platform for measuring, understanding and controlling quantum processors. A separate arXiv paper reports m
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Pelagic takes quantum control software beyond the lab
Pelagic Systems announced its launch on October 27, 2026, as a spinout from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Quantum Computing Programme (NQCP) at the Niels Bohr Institute. The company says it is developing a software platform to measure, understand and control quantum processors, with research groups and quantum-computing companies as intended users. Its announcement says the technology was developed over years of experimental research and demonstrated on superconducting quantum processors at NQCP and the Niels Bohr Institute.
The company describes a platform that brings together tools for quantum-hardware operation. Pelagic says it is combining high-level experimental software with real-time hardware control. Separately, a research paper reports an on-field-programmable gate array (FPGA) workflow for calibration and benchmarking; it does not establish that Pelagic’s commercial software itself runs those steps on an FPGA.
A research paper reports millisecond-scale results
A paper submitted to arXiv on February 12, 2026, describes a workflow that co-locates pulse generation, data acquisition, analysis and feed-forward on an FPGA. The authors write:
“We demonstrate an on-FPGA workflow that co-locates pulse generation, data acquisition, analysis, and feed-forward, eliminating CPU round trips.”
— Malthe A. Marciniak and co-authors, authors of “Millisecond-Scale Calibration and Benchmarking of Superconducting Qubits”
The paper describes sparse-sampling and on-FPGA inference methods, including implementations of Nelder–Mead optimization and golden-section search. The authors report estimating T1 in 10 milliseconds, optimizing readout parameters in 100 milliseconds and pulse amplitudes in 1 millisecond, and performing Clifford randomized gate benchmarking in 107 milliseconds. The experiments used a flux-tunable superconducting transmon qubit on a 12-qubit processor, with the reported data obtained from one qubit.
The paper explains that its FPGA workflow avoids sending measurement outcomes to a central computer for analysis before returning updated parameters to the controller. The authors say such transfers add communication and data-loading overhead. The reported FPGA methods were implemented on a Quantum Machines OPX1000 control system.
Six hours of continuous recalibration
The researchers also ran a closed-loop, on-FPGA recalibration protocol continuously for six hours, completing more than 74,000 consecutive recalibrations. They report that gate errors consistently retained better performance than the baseline initial calibration. Their correlation analysis found that recalibration suppressed the coupling between gate error and control-parameter drift while preserving performance linked to qubit coherence.
These results describe a particular superconducting-qubit experiment, rather than a test across multiple companies’ processors or control systems. Pelagic’s announcement describes the laboratory development and intended users of its platform; the research paper details the FPGA workflow and its measured results.
Innovation Fund Denmark supported the work
Innovation Fund Denmark’s account says its Grand Solutions programme supported experimental equipment used to develop and test the technology, while InnoExplorer enabled the team to devote more resources to software development. The account attributes these details to Pelagic co-founder Morten Kjaergaard, a quantum information physics associate professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen. The fund says both programmes contributed to the research and development behind the company.
Pelagic’s announcement quotes Peter Krogstrup, CEO of NQCP, describing the software:
“I'm incredibly proud to see Pelagic Systems spin out of our program. It's a sophisticated piece of quantum computing control software that's extremely efficient at calibrating, validating, and maintaining our QC hardware. Its built-in fast control and readout algorithms also enable us to apply advanced multi-qubit operations as we progress toward more complex hardware systems.”
— Prof. Peter Krogstrup, CEO, NQCP