Photonic secures $100M for Quantum Technology from BCI and Microsoft
Photonic, a company building a quantum computing platform based on photonically linked silicon spin qubits, has raised $100 million in funding.
The funds were raised from five sources, 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 to $140 million.
Photonic is making fault-tolerant quantum technologies a reality with its unique silicon spin-photon interface. The technology leverages the memory and computing capabilities of spins and the connectivity of photonics to build a fault-tolerant, networked quantum computers. The company has over 120 employees with a head office in Canada and has recently opened offices in the United Kingdom and the United States.
“Photonic’s approach to deliver on the decades-old promises of quantum computing continues to be fueled 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, 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 can keep pace. This is an innovation with awesome potential.”
As it completes its latest funding round, Photonic also announced it is collaborating with Microsoft on Quantum computing. Photonic and Microsoft will provide an integrated roadmap of technologies and products that can enable quantum communications over long distances and access to Photonic’s quantum computing offering via Microsoft Azure Quantum Elements.
Additionally, a Photonic technical paper, Scalable Fault-Tolerant Quantum Technologies with Silicon Colour Centres, details the company’s novel architecture, and a Microsoft blog post, Microsoft and Photonic join forces on the path to quantum at scale, offers more perspective on that company’s collaboration with Photonic.
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About the Author
Sean BuckleySean Buckley
Sean is the Editor-in-Chief of Lightwave. He establishes and executes Lightwave's editorial strategy across its website, email newsletters, events, and other information products. Before coming to Lightwave in July 2023, he served as editor of Broadband Communities. Earlier, he served as senior editor of FierceTelecom and the editor of the former Telecommunications Magazine. He got his start in the optical industry in 1998 when he became the editor of enterprise and optical networks at Information Gatekeepers. He has a BA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and lives in Dracut, Mass, with his wife, two sons, and his cat, Dove.
