Light Quantum Computing Raises Another $100 Million, Cumulatively Exceeding $1 Billion

In May, PhotonBox reported that Georgian Partners, Canada's largest growth equity firm, had agreed to lead a $100 million financing round to Toronto-based quantum computing startup Xanadu. Now, the financing has finally been officially announced.

Xanadu, a leader in optical quantum computing, announced that it has raised $100 million in a Series C round of funding led by Georgian Partners, with participation from Porsche Automotive Holdings, Forward Ventures, aluminum Ventures, Pegasus Tech Ventures, Silicon Valley To date, Xanadu has raised $250 million in cumulative funding, bringing the company's valuation to $1 billion and crossing the unicorn threshold.

According to incomplete statistics, companies in the optical quantum computing space have surpassed $1 billion in funding, including $665 million for PsiQuantum and $250 million for Xanadu, while other optical quantum computing companies have combined to raise at least $100 million.

Since its founding in 2016, Xanadu has been working to build useful quantum computers for people around the world.Xanadu's photonic approach to building quantum computers can take advantage of modern chip manufacturing facilities, the application of optical components developed by the existing telecommunications industry, and the use of optical fibers to network photonic chips. Such networks need to reach and exceed one million quantum bits, which is the scale at which useful applications can be accessed.

Christian Weedbrook, founder and CEO of Xanadu, said, "In this uncertain economic environment, the continued support of top investors is a testament to their confidence in our talented team, photonic technology and ability to execute."

Xanadu's accomplishments include demonstrating quantum computing superiority on its quantum computer, Borealis, and providing public access through the Xanadu Cloud, building PennyLane, a widely used quantum software framework, and forging key strategic partnerships with leading global companies.

The team's next goal is key to achieving the company's mission and one of the biggest challenges facing modern technology today: building a fault-tolerant and error-correcting quantum computer that scales to one million quantum bits. This funding round has allowed Xanadu to accelerate the pace of achieving this goal, in particular by building the first module to validate their fault-tolerant quantum computing architecture.

Fully programmable photonic processor Borealis

In the paper "Quantum Computing Superiority of Programmable Photonic Processors," published in June of this year, the optical quantum computer Borealis synthesizes a quantum state of 216 compressed state quantum bits entangled in three dimensions. Samples are then generated from such states at a rate that exceeds the capabilities of any existing classical supercomputer. Using direct simulations, the world's fastest supercomputers would take about 9,000 years to generate one such sample, while Borealis needed only 36 microseconds.

Ultimately, the machine detected 106 photons from a sample of high-dimensional Gaussian states, recording events of up to 219 photons and an average of 125 photons, surpassing the previous maximum detection of 113 photons by Ninth Chapter II.