Reflections on QUANTUM NOW | ICI QUANTIQUE

Canada has a small window of opportunity to cement its quantum advantage

Last week I attended QUANTUM NOW | ICI QUANTIQUE, Quantum Industry Canada’s tech expo during the international year of quantum. Given recent recognition by the PM and his G7 counterparts and NATO of the importance of quantum technologies, the timing could not have been better.

Canada has an incumbent advantage in this space, and as a result is in a position to lead the world through the disruption that quantum technologies promise in computing and beyond, and while there is still work to be done, the ultimate beneficiaries of the technology are being decided today. This conference was a well-delivered and focused forum toward establishing the roadmap we must adopt to ensure that we maintain and cement our lead.

In this post, I compile a set of reflections, lessons, and observations from the conference in advance of outlining a more concrete roadmap that Canada will need to adopt in order to secure its position as the global leader in quantum technology development.

Lessons from Sherbrooke

The conference started with a tour of the various moving parts of the quantum valley in Sherbrooke, QC, one of the oldest hubs of quantum activity in Canada.

In a previous interview with Lisa Lambert, we touched on the circumstances that led to Canadian quantum leadership. In Waterloo, it began with an eye-watering philanthropic donation of one third of the personal wealth of Mike Lazaridis at the time that led to the founding of the Perimeter Institute. In Sherbrooke, the path was different.

In 1980, the university decided that, being a small faculty, they could achieve more by specializing and concentrating their resources into one area than they could by taking a broader approach, and they went all-in on quantum materials research.

The government of Quebec soon got involved, and has poured money into it over the years, money that has been paid back many-fold. The concentration of expertise paid off in the long run and became a self-reinforcing thing. Concentration of world-class research talent and a focus on dedicated infrastructure led in turn to attracting more talent, to the point that Sherbrooke became a globally known hub of quantum research. Distriq, 3IT, and Institut Quantique together form a pipeline from lab to market that has already delivered commercial value that far exceeds the cost of building them. Institut Quantique boasts more than 600 graduates, more than 200 HQP positions created by spinout companies, and $500M in follow on investment, about 14x the original grant.

So deeply is quantum embedded in the region’s identity that even one of the buildings we visited was architecturally inspired by quantum machinery, and there is a real sense of excitement from all involved over what feels like the end stage of a process started almost 50 years ago.

Canada can learn important lessons from Sherbrooke.

Lean into regional concentration

In Canada, it has been pointed out by many that we tend to spread out support for innovation, sprinkling resources across far too many priority areas, both geographically and across sectors, to move the needle in any one. This comes from a place of good intention: fairness is a deeply rooted Canadian value.

However, if you look at innovation ecosystems that are successful, you will find that they all have in common a strong regional concentration of talent and capital. This is a natural and, in my view, largely unavoidable emergent property of the way innovation reinforces itself, as talent and capital come together to create more of both over time, just as Sherbrooke’s focus on quantum excellence reinforced that excellence.

One of the reasons that it has been difficult for Canada to establish technology-focused innovation hubs generally is that larger ecosystems tend to feed off smaller ones. Canada’s tech hubs are in many cases just feeder hubs for San Francisco and Boston. Once established, these ecosystems tend to be very difficult to dislodge, making first mover advantage critical.

What is sometimes missed in discussions around how to manage this, however, is that this effect is not just geographic, it is sectoral.

Sherbrooke (and Waterloo) prove the value of leaning into regional specialization early and taking a deliberate approach and a calculated risk toward owning a particular space, a lesson that can be generalized to any emerging technology. For a tech hub like San Francisco to siphon talent away from Canada, there must be an established base of talent in the particular tech sector of interest, and the United States has very little quantum activity, relatively speaking, compared to Canada. Because of this, Canada has an opportunity to cement its quantum advantage and become the global attractor in quantum.

Admirable though the desire may be to ensure that investment is geographically fair and equitable, Sherbrooke’s example, suggest that we should reframe how we think about fairness where innovation is concerned. Instead of trying to ensure that everyone has a chance at getting support where they are, Sherbrooke’s example shows us that we should lean into regional specialization, focusing our efforts on creating conditions where small ecosystems can have disproportionate global impact. This is not incompatible with principles of equity and fairness, it just requires a reframing: fairness in this approach means ensuring that anyone who has something to contribute has the opportunity and mobility to participate in the growing hub that supports their specialization.

Reflections from the tech expo

QUANTUM NOW

In contrast to so many of the focused tech conferences I have been to in the past few months, QUANTUM NOW was a refreshing change of pace from the usual hype cycle. As a physicist that is not a quantum expert, I went into the conference expecting a lot of deep tech companies with huge amounts of research and technical uncertainty between them and commercial impact. Instead, I was greeted by scientists and engineers sharing unadorned stories of progress toward quantum technologies. Everything I saw felt grounded and real, and nobody used the phrase “game-changer”.

Many of the exhibitors have products on the market and are actually delivering commercial value today. Quantum technologies are no longer science fiction.

Quantum is not a monolith, and not all elements of quantum technology are at the same point relative to commercial impact. Quantum sensing broadly refers to the use of any quantum phenomena to sense elements of our physical world and probably represents the most advanced of the three areas. SB Quantum, for example, has developed sensitive magnetometers that are set to be launched into space by NASA next year, with the goal of mapping earth’s magnetosphere. Through that mission, the technology will provide an alternative to GPS for global navigation, using sensors developed here in Canada, and shows promise for defense applications as well as mining. Phantom Photonics has developed LIDAR sensors for long-range undersea sensing, promising the ability to sense submarines and monitor undersea cables, with applications in defense and arctic sovereignty, and is already engaged with NATO DIANA.

Quantum computing has been “10 years away” for about 25 years now, but it was clear from the exhibitors that value is already being created. Quantum computers with early commercial utility are already here.

To make the stage of development more concrete, one of the panels compared timelines for quantum computing to classical computing. Starting with the transistor in 1947, gate devices in 1958, processors and applications running on them in 1971, personal computers in 1981, and Microsoft OS and consumer computing taking off in 1990, classical computing proceeded on a series of 10-year breakthroughs that is now being mirrored by quantum development. Quantum is on a roughly similar if somewhat extended trajectory. The qubit was demonstrated in 1992; D-Wave Systems (also Canadian) released D-Wave One, now recognized as the first commercial quantum computer in 2011; IBM released their first circuit-based quantum computer in 2019, and recently demonstrated landmark error correction results suggesting that it will be possible to scale up to large qubit counts.

Today, this is where we stand, with commercial “mainframe” quantum computers a reality. Quantum Insider reports that 41 quantum computers were sold in 2024, at an average price of $19M. To put this in perspective, this represents a doubling of volume and a halving of price since 2021.

The general attitude among panelists toward the question of when we would have mainstream quantum computing was one of quiet confidence that it was just a matter of time and engineering, rather than a question of physical possibility. While quantum computers that meet the DARPA definition of “utility-scale operation” may still be 10 years away, that number seems to now be realistic. DARPA wants to do it in 8. A scaling race is underway, a race where Canadian companies have a significant headstart.

ICI QUANTIQUE

I want to take a moment to acknowledge the communications team that named this conference: QUANTUM NOW | ICI QUANTIQUE. For those who do not speak French, the French name is slightly different from the English one, translating as “QUANTUM HERE”. As came out clearly in almost every discussion in the conference and as I discussed above, there is a strong argument to be made for Canada to make a stand in and lead this space. Thanks to the aforementioned early investments in Sherbrooke and Waterloo, and emerging but still strong quantum hubs in Calgary and Vancouver, Canada has a disproportionate concentration of quantum talent. Of the people globally who are trained and able to contribute to pushing quantum science, engineering, and software development, many of them are in Canada. As such, Canada has an incumbent lead even over the United States. On the other hand, American and Chinese investment in quantum dwarfs our own. Canada has a very limited window of time in which to capitalize on this opportunity and establish the regional concentration of talent and capital needed to make Canada an attractor hub, rather than a feeder hub, of quantum technology and talent.

As with any emerging technology space, governments are still prime movers in quantum tech, spending $40-$50B per year. While VC is accelerating, it is still tiny compared to public sector spending, operating only at the margins. It is also clear that M&A activity is picking up, and many at the conference expressed an expectation of market consolidation into a few large companies over the next few years, a natural progression that signals an emerging market moving toward maturity.

This points to an unsurprising but important learning for policymakers: it is government spending, not private sector investment, that will decide who wins the race. If we want consolidation to occur in Canada’s favor, we need to set our companies up to direct it.

Just like the name of the conference that can only be fully appreciated in both official languages together, a coordinated approach that includes both anglophone and francophone Canada is necessary for success. Both have established internationally renowned centres of quantum excellence in research, centres that are now transitioning into operationalizing this research through companies that are advanced well past the startup stage, companies that are ready to anchor Canada as the global leader in quantum tech—if we stay the course, and unite behind a pan-Canadian push to be the first country to fully realize the potential of quantum tech.

Quantum is happening now with or without us, but if we want quantum to happen ici, we need to double down on the commitment, and play to our strengths - strengths which require coordination across both anglophone and francophone Canada.

As someone with a deep appreciation for effective communication: chef’s kiss.

What’s next?

The vast majority of value creation from quantum has yet to be unlocked. While the enabling hardware remains in development, just as with classical computing, it is the application layer in which most of the potential for value creation lies, potential that is only now entering the realm of possibility. You have probably heard of exponential speedups that are possible in cracking RSA public key encryption using quantum algorithms, but there are numerous potential applications where quantum computers can provide even quadratic speedups over classical approaches that have enormous potential for value creation. With only a few thousand people globally that are even qualified to build in the space, Canada has everything it needs to lead the way.

For now.

If you’re tracking the Canadian quantum space, you have likely heard about the DARPA QBI program and that four Canadian quantum companies are participating. While at the conference, I had the opportunity to interview leadership from several quantum companies, including some of those that are part of DARPA QBI, to better understand the implications for Canadian quantum. This post is already long enough and so the interviews and related commentary will wait for my next one, but the core message was clear and consistent: if Canada wants to remain relevant in quantum and cement its leadership position, the time to commit is right now.

I’m glad to see that Minister Solomon has this top of mind as well, discussing policy moves intended to ensure that Canadian quantum companies can stay Canadian. In my next post, I will use my interviews of the leadership of several of these companies to suggests concrete policy initiatives that can support this goal, and provide timelines over which they must happen if they are to matter.