This partnership combines Xanadu’s existing expertise in ultra-low loss photonic design and process development with GF’s industry-leading photonics manufacturing prowess to accelerate the development and manufacturing of advanced photonic components, including ultra-low loss silicon nitride (SiN) photonics and Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detectors (SNSPDs), through GF’s 300 mm production line in Malta, New York.

The initial focus of the Xanadu and GF partnership is on the industrialization of Xanadu's SNSPDs and its ultra-low-loss SiN platform. In photonic quantum computing, where information is carried by photons, reading calculation outputs requires photon number resolving (PNR) detectors, which are advanced optical sensors that determine the number of photons in a single light pulse. Xanadu has adopted SNSPDs, widely recognized as the most reliable PNR technology, as its PNR platform for utility-scale quantum computing. The adoption of SNSPDs is expected to dramatically increase the speed of Xanadu’s quantum computing systems and considerably reduce the chip overheads needed to deliver utility-scale quantum computers with Xanadu’s photonic quantum computing architecture. Combining ultra-high efficiency SNSPDs with ultra-low loss SiN photonics, used as optical circuit boards to guide photons with negligible signal loss across a wide spectrum of light, forms the backbone of Xanadu’s photonic quantum computing technology.

Transferring components of Xanadu’s existing advanced photonics technology to GF’s 300 mm manufacturing line represents a critical shift from lab-scale prototyping to industrial-grade production. In addition to SNSPDs and SiN, Xanadu and GF are exploring future work packages to further develop high-performance quantum modules that are intended to increase the power and utility of photonic quantum computing systems. The output of this collaboration is expected to serve as the manufacturing foundation for Xanadu’s upcoming fault-tolerant demonstrators, supporting the company's long-term objective of providing the hardware architecture for future quantum data centers.