Canada to loan quantum startup Xanadu $140 million to build manufacturing plant. 29 Aug 2026 01:05AM (Updated: 29 Aug 2026 01:41AM) Add CNA as a trusted source to help Google better understand and surface our content in search results. Aug 28: The Canadian government will loan C$195 million ($140.78 million) to Xanadu Quantum for setting up a plant that would make photonic components for quantum computers, in the country's largest ever support for the technology. The move, unveiled on Friday, highlights growing global interest in quantum computers and comes months after the Trump administration decided to take $2 billion in equity stakes across nine quantum-computing firms to secure U.S. leadership. Experts have long touted quantum computers' potential to solve problems regular computers cannot and speed up scientific discoveries, but the technology remains error prone because of its extreme sensitivity to any disturbances including sound. Friday's loan covers the federal portion of up to C$390 million in potential government funding Xanadu announced in March. The company said it expects to announce a deal for the remaining sum of up to C$195 million, from Ontario's provincial government, "in the near future." Xanadu said it would use the federal loan to help build a manufacturing plant for photonics in Toronto, without sharing the terms. "Essentially repayments in the future will be based as a percentage of revenue going forward, and it (the loan) is expected to create up to 275 jobs as well," CEO Christian Weedbrook told Reuters. Founded in 2016 by Weedbrook, Xanadu is building a quantum computer that uses photonics - the light-based technology behind fiber-optic cables of the internet. Its system, which is not yet commercially available, is designed to compute at room temperature, unlike other quantum computers that require extreme cold to lower potential errors. Xanadu, whose customers include AMD and Tower Semiconductor, listed on the Nasdaq in March after a blank-check merger. "Overall, we work with foundries in the U.S., Asia, Europe... we do all our chip designs ourselves in Canada, send them off to these different foundries," Weedbrook said. ($1 = 1.3851 Canadian dollars)

Xanadu gets $195M from federal government to build a quantum computer factory in Toronto. The company is building a packaging and assembly facility in a former soup plant Xanadu CEO Christian Weedbrook. The new quantum factory will be a scaled up version of the $10-million facility the firm opened at its Toronto headquarters last June. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna for The Logic Aug 28, 2026 | 1:00 PM ET Listen Now TORONTO - Xanadu is opening a new factory to make the hardware for its quantum computers, with $195 million in new funding from the federal government. The firm plans to overhaul part of a former Campbell Soup plant in Toronto to manufacture the photonic components for its system. It's part of Xanadu's plan to refine and mass-produce quantum computers to combine into a US$1-billion new data centre in the city by 2029. Workers at the 158,000 square-foot facility will prepare the firm's light-based chips, including testing and packaging, the specialized process of adding connectors and housing to processors. It will be a scaled up version of the $10-million facility Xanadu opened at its Toronto headquarters last June. At the new factory, workers will also assemble the servers and racks that form its machines. The firm expects to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the initial buildout, but doesn't yet have a final budget. "Building utility-scale quantum computers will require a new generation of highly specialized manufacturing capabilities," Xanadu CEO Christian Weedbrook said in a statement. AI Minister Evan Solomon said the federal funding supports "advanced manufacturing and commercialization in Canada." Ottawa's backing comes from the Strategic Response Fund (SRF). Xanadu is also part of the Canadian Quantum Champions Program, launched last December, which gave four of the sector's leading firms an initial $23 million each to keep them in the country. The company was previously awarded $40 million from the SRF's predecessor program in January 2023 to develop the technical building blocks of its system. Xanadu is also in demand across the border. It's one of three Canadian quantum computing companies enrolled in a U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency initiative that could give developers up to US$316 million each if they prove their machines can solve real-world commercial and industrial problems at a reasonable cost by 2033. U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered federal departments to help speed up the technology's development, and encourage its manufacture in the U.S. To reach true commercial scale, Xanadu's data centre will need to produce up to 500 logical qubits, the base unit of quantum computing. At that size, its system will be able to detect and correct errors in the flow of information through the hardware. The firm will need several hundred server racks for its data centre, which will power its cloud service, plus more to sell to customers like government departments and research labs. Xanadu announced plans for a new "qubit factory" in March, shortly before it went public via a merger with a blank-cheque company. At the time, Weedbrook said the firm was in negotiations for $390 million in funding split between the federal and Ontario governments. On Friday, Xanadu revealed the location of the facility, which it is calling Inception, and announced it had reached a deal for the federal portion of the money. The new factory is in the suburb of Etobicoke, in a building where Campbell opened its first Canadian plant in 1931. In January 2018, the food firm announced plans to close the facility and shift soup and broth production to the U.S. Developer QuadReal Property later restored the original facade, and converted the building into a warehouse.

Canada to loan quantum startup Xanadu $140 million to build manufacturing plant. By Thomson Reuters Aug 28, 2026 | 1:05 PM By Jaspreet Singh Aug 28 (Reuters) - The Canadian government will loan C$195 million ($140.78 million) to Xanadu Quantum for setting up a plant that would make photonic components for quantum computers, in the country's largest ever support for the technology. The move, unveiled on Friday, highlights growing global interest in quantum computers and comes months after the Trump administration decided to take $2 billion in equity stakes across nine quantum-computing firms to secure U.S. leadership. Experts have long touted quantum computers' potential to solve problems regular computers cannot and speed up scientific discoveries, but the technology remains error prone because of its extreme sensitivity to any disturbances including sound. Friday's loan covers the federal portion of up to C$390 million in potential government funding Xanadu announced in March. The company said it expects to announce a deal for the remaining sum of up to C$195 million, from Ontario's provincial government, "in the near future." Xanadu said it would use the federal loan to help build a manufacturing plant for photonics in Toronto, without sharing the terms. "Essentially repayments in the future will be based as a percentage of revenue going forward, and it (the loan) is expected to create up to 275 jobs as well," CEO Christian Weedbrook told Reuters. Founded in 2016 by Weedbrook, Xanadu is building a quantum computer that uses photonics - the light-based technology behind fiber-optic cables of the internet. Its system, which is not yet commercially available, is designed to compute at room temperature, unlike other quantum computers that require extreme cold to lower potential errors. Xanadu, whose customers include AMD and Tower Semiconductor, listed on the Nasdaq in March after a blank-check merger. "Overall, we work with foundries in the U.S., Asia, Europe... we do all our chip designs ourselves in Canada, send them off to these different foundries," Weedbrook said. ($1 = 1.3851 Canadian dollars) (Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Sahal Muhammed)