Christian Weedbrook is the founder and CEO of Xanadu, a leading quantum computing company based in Toronto. He tells us how Canada is a great place to build a company and why he’s looking to raise $200 million to build a data centre.
Is there a misconception about your industry you’d like to set straight?
That you have to be bald to run a quantum company.
What needs to happen for quantum computing to work at a large scale?
We have small quantum computers today but we really need them to be much bigger — a data centre-sized system. For our photonic approach we need to overcome loss [of photons in the process, which degrades the computation]. Based on the team’s success in previous milestones, we believe we have a good chance of succeeding.
You’ve said Canada’s a great place to build a quantum company. Why?
There is lots of great talent in Canada, and it’s a great country.
What can the government do to better support the industry?
Perhaps more procurement programs and a billion-dollar deep tech fund.
If everything goes as planned over the next three to five years, what can we expect to see from Xanadu?
Continuing to build towards a quantum data centre.
What is a quantum computing use case that most people wouldn’t know about and that Xanadu is working on?
We are focused exclusively on quantum chemistry applications and more specifically how to use a large-scale quantum computer to create the next generation of batteries.
Is there a book you’ve read recently that you’d recommend?
I’m rereading the Walter Isaacson book Elon Musk and Entanglement by Amir Aczel.