Quantum computing startup Nord Quantique has achieved so-called unicorn status, securing a $1.4-billion USD ($1.9-billion CAD) valuation.
First reported by The Globe and Mail on Thursday, the Sherbrooke, Qué.-based company raised $30 million USD earlier this spring from investment giant Fidelity. BetaKit has confirmed the size of the valuation, and the funding, with multiple sources familiar with the company’s operations who spoke on the condition of confidentiality.
“Nord Quantique is at the stage where we shift from proving the technology to scaling the company around it.”
The company, which was co-founded in 2020 by physicists Philippe St-Jean and Julien Camirand Lemyre as a spinoff from Université de Sherbrooke’s quantum institute, joins three other Canadian-founded quantum firms that have landed valuations greater than a billion dollars: D-Wave, Xanadu, and Photonic.
Xanadu made its public markets debut earlier this spring, and Finland’s IQM and US/UK-headquartered Quantinuum have both announced plans to IPO this year. BetaKit has reached out to Nord Quantique for comment on whether it has public market plans in the near future.
Earlier this week, Nord Quantique named Tammy Furlong its new chief financial officer. The company noted that Furlong has experience in “guiding public and pre-IPO companies through critical phases of growth and industrialization.”
“Nord Quantique is at the stage where we shift from proving the technology to scaling the company around it,” Furlong said in a press release.
Canada has emerged as a frontrunner in the race to build commercial quantum computers, which can process massive amounts of data at previously unthinkable speeds. Quantum computing is expected to revolutionize fields from medicine to finance.
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Nord Quantique, alongside Xanadu and Photonic, have all made it to the second stage of the US Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, a program run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to achieve a commercial quantum computer by the year 2033. Companies that submit a successful R&D plan will move to the final stage to see if their quantum computers can be constructed; those that are successful could receive up to $316 million USD in funding.
The three companies, as well as Montréal’s Anyon, are also participating in Canada’s similar Canadian Quantum Champions Program, which has provided each firm with up to $23 million in funds in its first research phase.
The company said in a release at the time that it was selected due to the capabilities of its patented superconducting quantum circuits, which the company says offer faster and more efficient computing systems with fewer errors.
With files from Josh Scott
Feature image courtesy Nord Quantique.