Photonic quantum computing company raises $100 million investment
Photonic, a quantum computing company, has announced that it has raised an investment round of $100 million. The company seeks to build one of the world’s first scalable, fault-tolerant, and unified quantum computing and networking platforms, based on photonically linked silicon spin qubits. The funds were raised from organisations including British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI), Microsoft Corporation, the UK government’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF), Inovia Capital, and Amadeus Capital Partners. This brings the company’s total funding raised to date to $140 million.
Photonic aims to make fault-tolerant quantum technologies a reality with its silicon spin-photon interface, leveraging the memory and computing capabilities of spins and the connectivity of photonics to build a scalable, fault-tolerant, and networked quantum computer. The company has over 120 employees with a head office in Canada and has recently opened offices in the UK and the US.
"Photonic’s game-changing approach to deliver on the decades-old promises of quantum computing continues to be fuelled by our committed investors and best-in-class employees," said Paul Terry, CEO of Photonic. "The support of such knowledgeable investors who believe in our work is a testament to our team, our technology, and the direction we’re headed in."
Hermann Hauser, co-founder and venture partner at Amadeus Capital Partners, added: "Photonic is solving one of the central challenges for scalable quantum computing. By linking qubits with photons on a silicon-based architecture, the power of quantum processing can be unleashed across a distributed computing network with confidence that error correction is able to keep pace. This is an innovation with awesome potential."
Gordon J. Fyfe, CEO of BCI, said: "Since our initial investment in Photonic, the company has reached several major technical milestones related to developing secure quantum solutions, while establishing key commercial partnerships. As one of Photonic’s largest shareholders, BCI is excited to partner with its management team with the goal of developing one of the first fault-tolerant quantum computers in the world."
Photonic has also recently announced a collaboration with Microsoft, through which the two companies aim to unlock the next stages of development in quantum networking. Together, they intend to provide an integrated roadmap of technologies and products that can enable reliable quantum communications over long distances, as well as access to Photonic’s quantum computing offering via Microsoft Azure Quantum Elements.
