University Of Toronto’s startup Xanadu receives $40 million in federal funding

Xanadu Quantum Technologies, founded by former University of Toronto post-doctoral physics researcher Christian Weedbrook, has received $40 million in federal funding to support its leading quantum computing technology, the Globe and Mail reports.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently visited the Toronto startup’s headquarters to announce the investment through the federal Strategic Investment Fund, to allow Xanadu to build and commercialize the world’s first photonic-based, fault-tolerant quantum computer.

“What’s happening here is cutting edge not just in Canada, but around the world,” said Trudeau, whose government has pledged to spend $360 million in a national strategy to advance quantum technologies.

Xanadu, an alumnus of the Creative Destruction Lab seed-stage accelerator at U of T’s Rotman School of Management, revealed last year that its system, called Borealis, had achieved “quantum advantage” by solving in 36 millionths of a second a specific math problem that would take some 9,000 years for the world’s most powerful supercomputers to complete.