Xanadu Launches Quantum Cloud Platform Giving Developers Access to Gate-Based Photonic Quantum Processors

(VentureBeat) Xanadu has launched its quantum cloud platform. Developers can now access Xanadu’s gate-based photonic quantum processors with 8-qubit or 12-qubit chips — 24-qubit chips will be available “in the next month or so,” Xanadu founder and CEO Christian Weedbrook told VentureBeat. The startup expects to “roughly double” the number of qubits available in its cloud every six months. The hope is Xanadu Quantum Cloud will let businesses, developers, and researchers build novel solutions to problems in finance, quantum chemistry, machine learning, and graph analytics.
Based in Toronto, Canada, Xanadu has been developing quantum computers based on photonics since its founding in September 2016. The choice of technology means Xanadu’s quantum processors operate at room temperature (most other examples of quantum computing tech have to be cooled to very low temperatures) and can be integrated into existing fiber optic-based telecommunication infrastructure.
“We’re pushing the open source and agnostic nature,” says Xanadu founder and CEO Christian Weedbrook said. “There could be a thing in the future where we have professional services and add-ons, where it could tie back to Xanadu in an exclusivity way. That’s something that’s always up our sleeve, but the key point at the moment is building the ecosystem. Building many people around the world using this and really being a standard is our hope for quantum software.”
Looking ahead, Xanadu is also exploring secure communication and quantum networking, “an area that photonics is poised to dominate.” The company envisions “a global array of photonic quantum computers, networked over a quantum internet.”