🤝 Meet Christian Weedbrook. He’s the CEO and founder of Canadian quantum computing firm Xanadu. We caught up with Christian ahead of Xanadu’s planned $3 billion IPO to chat about the practical use cases for quantum computing, why Canada could be a global leader in the field, and why that should all matter to us.
You’re originally from Australia, why did you decide to stay in Canada after you finished school?
I arrived for my postdoctoral degree in 2010, and I just loved the country and particularly Toronto. It's nothing more in depth than that, I just thought it was a great city to live in and I've been here for about 16 years now. It's a great place to be.
What are some of the challenges that you see in turning Canadian research into homegrown, profitable companies?
I think, for me, it always comes back to mindset. We’ve said from day one that we won’t be moving to the U.S. We think there’s enough here. Canada is great for talent, particularly in AI and quantum. There’s also more money going into the sector, including a lot of federal government funding. We announced that we’re in final negotiations for up to $290 million with the federal and provincial government.
So I don’t see anything that’s lacking except the agency or mindset to want to stay here. We’ll be going public, listing on the Nasdaq as well as the Toronto Stock Exchange, and it’s been great. I think others can do that too. There have obviously been other success stories before us, and I think more and more people are realizing Toronto is great and that it’s a great place to start a business.
What's the thinking behind listing on the Nasdaq and TSX?
The natural choice is the Nasdaq — it’s far bigger and gives you exposure to a large amount of capital. So it becomes a question of whether you just do that or also list on the Toronto Stock Exchange. We decided to do both because we’re proudly Canadian and want to do something great here. There are also many strong pension funds and other investors who invest through the TSX. We think we’re an attractive company, and listing on the TSX gives those investors the opportunity to consider us.
How would you explain the importance of quantum computing to the average Canadian?
I always go back to a previous quantum computer we had called Borealis. Borealis solved an extremely difficult math problem in what was a very important proof of principle. It would have taken the world’s fastest supercomputer at the time 7 million years to solve, and our quantum computer solved it in 2 minutes. That gives you a sense that something remarkable is happening here.
The technology will be applicable to major industries. Drug discovery is a good example. It takes on average 10 years, costs billions of dollars, and 90% of candidates fail. The potential to do this in less than a year and with greater accuracy is revolutionary. There’s others like material design, next-generation batteries, next-generation solar cells, finance, AI, defence. Many large industries will be affected by quantum computing.
Are there real world problems that quantum computers have already solved today that can't be solved by classical computers?
No, there’s no quantum computer anywhere in the world that’s solved real-world problems in that way yet. For us, we’ve been clear that we’re aiming for 2029–2030 to have a quantum computer capable of solving real-world problems that customers will pay for. We have quantum computers now, as do others, but they all need to get bigger. Through our roadmap, we anticipate reaching that point around 2029–2030.
What do you see being the first meaningful thing that a Xanadu quantum computer is going to solve?
We’re aiming for applications in material design and quantum chemistry. It’s a very large field focused on developing new materials, and it will be very important and impactful. It’s the lowest-hanging fruit, based on what the mathematics tells us.
You guys are in talks to receive major government funding. What would you say to a Canadian taxpayer who may not see the value in quantum investment right now?
I would suggest thinking about parallels with other industries. For instance, the early days of the internet — quantum computing will be just as impactful as that. Same with the early days of semiconductors or digital computing — imagine if we didn’t have computers or phones. Quantum computing has the potential to be just as significant.
In Canada, we often talk about industries we’ve missed out on, and people rightly say we’ve missed out on fully commercializing AI. We don’t want that to happen with quantum computing. We have a chance to say enough’s enough — we’re going to do something big here. It’s going to be based here, and people will come to us rather than us going to other countries. That’s why it’s important.
What kind of stuff do you like to do for fun when you're not building supercomputers?
Not too much. Even on nights and weekends, I still work a lot. There’s so much to do, but I love it, it’s meaningful. When I’m exhausted, I’ll put on some streaming or spend time with my family, just simple things like that. I love summer here, so anywhere around Toronto where you can walk, especially after long winters, I enjoy that. I like going to bookstores and the cinema—both of those seem to be dying, so we’ll see how it plays out.
This is a question from one of our readers. What do you think sets quantum computing apart from some of the other, expensive, emerging technologies that are on the horizon right now?
Everything in nature and in our world is about how you use information, which comes down to zeros and ones. All our discoveries have relied on bits, zeros and ones, and all of that is relying on traditional physics — those laws of traditional physics are what govern how information is processed.
But now, with quantum computing, imagine if you can zoom in onto any object down to its atomic level and harness that. Weird things happen. You’re now manipulating not just zeros and ones, but some combination of 0 and 1 as well. That really is a fundamentally different way of computing. That’s the exciting thing, we haven’t seen that before in humanity’s history. So I think that’s the key difference to other technologies.
Who are you selling quantum computing services to?
We’re aiming to build a quantum data centre here in Toronto by 2029. The revenue model is cloud access, similar to AWS or Azure. Customers and large corporations will buy time on our cloud. It’s essentially quantum computing as a service.
It’s very similar to what we have now before these large-scale quantum computers, where we offer time through package deals. We provide access to our hardware, our software, and our team working on algorithms and use cases. We work with a lot of companies across automotive, defence, chemicals, and other sectors.
This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
