Xanadu Grows Its U.S. Footprint With a New Albany Base

Xanadu is putting down deeper roots in the United States, anchored by a growing office in Albany, New York. The photonic quantum computing company says its U.S. workforce has grown more than fivefold since 2023, and it expects to add significantly more staff by the end of this year. The move places Xanadu closer to the semiconductor and photonics partners it depends on to build hardware.

Why Albany

Indeed, Albany has become a center for semiconductor and quantum research, which is the draw for a company that builds machines on photonic chips. Xanadu has also expanded in the San Francisco Bay Area and now has staff spread across 19 states. In a July 9 press release, CEO and founder Christian Weedbrook framed the Albany presence as a way to sit next to key partners and cut response times. As Weedbrook said:

“The demand for quantum computing has never been higher, and our rapid growth in the United States is a testament to the talent and strategic partnerships we have built across the semiconductor and technology industries.”

The company recently secured partnerships with Corning, Applied Materials, DISCO, and EV Group, all names from the semiconductor and photonics supply chain. Being close to those suppliers is part of the reasoning behind the U.S. buildout.

The technology behind the expansion

Xanadu, which trades on the Nasdaq and TSX as XNDU, points to two recent results as the basis for the growth. Its Aurora system laid groundwork for fault-tolerant machines and showed off a trait of the photonic approach, the ability to link modules together and slot them into existing data centers.

The company also demonstrated GKP qubits on a chip, a step it describes as clearing a scalability hurdle by producing a fault-tolerance-ready photonic qubit that can be manufactured at volume. Both came out in Nature.

The company’s argument is that a photonic design lets it tap the existing semiconductor and photonics supply chains rather than build everything from scratch. Time will tell whether that speeds the path to a useful fault-tolerant machine, and Xanadu is betting on the U.S. expansion for it.