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A Massive Quantum Bet Lands in Vancouver

Photonic just pulled in $180 million CAD, and this time the money is not being raised for theory or long-term research.

The Vancouver-based quantum computing company says it is ready to commercialize. That means enterprise customers, revenue targets, and real-world deployments rather than experiments confined to labs.

With backing from RBC, Telus, Microsoft, and several major institutional investors, Photonic is positioning itself as one of the first quantum startups to cross the line from promise to product.

Why This Fundraise Is Bigger Than the Headline Number

The $180 million is only the first close.

CEO Paul Terry says the company expects to raise substantially more in the next few months, potentially pushing the round beyond $250 million USD. According to Terry, this could be the final capital raise Photonic needs before reaching cash flow positive operations.

In a sector known for heavy burn rates and delayed timelines, that claim immediately sets Photonic apart.

The Commercial Model Investors Actually Believe In

Photonic is not trying to sell quantum computers to a handful of governments or research institutions.

Instead, the company plans to sell quantum computing as a service. The idea is similar to cloud infrastructure. Businesses access quantum capability when they need it, without owning or maintaining specialized hardware.

This approach lowers the barrier to adoption and dramatically expands the potential customer base.

Entanglement Without the Sci-Fi Spin

Photonic’s core technology is built around quantum entanglement.

Entanglement allows particles to remain linked even when separated by large distances. In computing terms, this lets multiple quantum systems function as a single networked machine.

Co-founder and chief quantum officer Stephanie Simmons says this is how Photonic has tackled the scale problem that has stalled much of the quantum industry.

Without solving scale, quantum remains impressive but impractical.

Why Banks and Telecoms Are Putting Real Money In

RBC and Telus are not passive investors here.

Photonic’s technology has immediate applications in secure communications, including detecting network intrusion and unauthorized listening. For telecom operators and financial institutions, this is a live concern, not a hypothetical future risk.

Telus Global Ventures has said Photonic’s distributed architecture aligns with data center scale deployment, a signal that this is being evaluated as infrastructure, not novelty tech.

Canada’s Strategic Quantum Moment

Photonic is now one of the most heavily funded deep tech companies in Canadian history.

The company is also participating in Canada’s Quantum Champions Program, a federal initiative modeled after US DARPA efforts. That places Photonic among a small group of companies being supported as nationally strategic technologies.

While global attention often focuses on the US and China, Canada is quietly building leverage in quantum networking.

A Quantum Market Headed for Consolidation

The timing of this raise matters.

Other quantum startups are struggling to secure late-stage funding. Toronto-based Xanadu recently opted for a SPAC route after private fundraising became more difficult. Venture capital appetite for long-horizon quantum bets has cooled.

Paul Terry believes 2025 breakthroughs will force consolidation across the sector. Companies that cannot commercialize will disappear or be acquired.

Photonic is betting it will be one of the survivors.

What This Means for Everyday People

Quantum computing usually sounds distant, but its impact is not.

If Photonic succeeds, quantum processing becomes a shared service rather than a restricted government asset. That affects cybersecurity, drug development, logistics, financial modeling, and energy optimization.

It also determines whether Canada becomes a foundational player in next-generation computing or simply exports talent to larger markets.

For everyday people, this is about whether the next computing leap expands access or concentrates power even further.

That simple idea of moving water uphill and downhill is the foundation of pumped storage hydropower, one of the oldest and most reliable ways to store electricity. Across the world, these reservoirs hold roughly 8,500 gigawatt hours of energy. They act like giant batteries, balancing the ups and downs of solar and wind.

But there is one big problem. Pumped hydro only works where the land allows it. You need mountains, valleys, and water. There are only so many places left to build one.

“I am in love with pumped hydro,” Aufiero told TechCrunch. “It’s just not enough to keep up with renewables.”

So he took the idea somewhere no one had gone before, under the sea.

Aufiero co-founded Sizable Energy, a startup that wants to move the concept offshore. Instead of carving dams into mountains, Sizable builds flexible reservoirs that float and sink in deep water. The company recently raised 8 million dollars in a round led by Playground Global, with backing from EDEN/IAG, Exa Ventures, Satgana, Unruly Capital, and Verve Ventures.

At first glance, Sizable’s design looks like an hourglass. One soft reservoir floats on the surface while another sits on the seabed. A tube connects them, along with a series of turbines. When electricity is cheap, those turbines pump salty water from the bottom up. When the grid needs power, the process reverses the dense brine falls back down, spinning the turbines and generating electricity.

From a physics standpoint, Aufiero says, it is like lifting a heavy block of salt. But instead of cranes and cables, Sizable dissolves the salt in water. The energy is stored as potential weight rather than chemistry, and that makes it scalable and reusable.

On land, each pumped hydro site must be custom-built for its location. Offshore, every Sizable system can be identical. That uniformity means mass production, faster installation, and lower costs.

Sizable has already tested small-scale models in wave tanks and off the coast of Reggio Calabria, Italy. The company plans to deploy a full demonstration unit by 2026 and several commercial sites soon after. Each turbine can generate up to seven megawatts, and deeper ocean sites can store far more energy.

The cost target is about twenty euros per kilowatt hour, roughly one tenth the price of large grid batteries today.

That price could make ocean-based storage a powerful partner for offshore wind projects, which already share transmission lines back to shore. But the same system could connect to any coastal grid as long as the water is deep enough, at least five hundred meters.

“We believe that long duration energy storage is required not only for renewable integration but also to make the grid resilient,” Aufiero said. “We need something new.”

If it works, Sizable Energy could open an entirely new category of energy infrastructure. The ocean is vast. Using it as a global storage network could stabilize renewables at scale, cut costs, and reduce the need for expensive lithium-based systems.

For now, the company is focused on proving it can operate safely and reliably in real ocean conditions. But if Sizable succeeds, it could redefine how the world thinks about storing power not just in batteries, but in water itself.

Read the original report by Tim De Chant at TechCrunch.

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