Xanadu Becomes Toronto's Latest Unicorn

Xanadu is a quantum computing company that hopes to make quantum computing commercially available to everyday users. It closed its Series C fundraising round at US $100 million bringing the Toronto startup’s valuation to US $1 billion, reaching official unicorn status. The funding round was led by Georgian and included other new and returning investors such as Porsche Automobil Holding SE, Forward Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Pegasus Tech Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Bessemer Venture Partners, Capricorn, BDC Capital, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson founding partner Tim Draper.

Quantum computing leverages quantum bits (“qubits”) which, unlike their binary counterparts (1 and 0) can exist as both 1 and 0 at the same time or a mixture of 1 and 0. As a result, quantum computing can bypass some inefficiencies of classical computing and solve problems much faster than even the most sophisticated computers. However, there are significant barriers to making this technology available to the average consumer. Some notable examples are that they must be kept at extremely cold temperatures to stabilize the quantum particles and that there are not very many commercial use cases for them yet. Xanadu has managed to create quantum computers that can operate at room temperature and hopes to use the new injection of capital to support its pursuit of developing the world’s first million-qubit quantum computer.

Xanadu continues its strong fundraising history which began in 2018 when it raised US $9 million in its seed round, US $32 million in its 2019 Series A round, and US $100 million in its 2021 Series B round. 

Xanadu managed to continue its growth throughout ongoing market uncertainty because of its launch of the world’s first cloud-deployed photonic quantum computer combined with its ongoing leadership in the development of an open-source software library for quantum computing.