TORONTO – A Canadian pioneer in quantum computing made its debut on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Friday.
In its first few hours trading under the XNDU ticker, Xanadu Quantum Technologies shares were hovering around $14. They ended the day at $16.03.
Toronto-based Xanadu is known for developing a light-based approach to scale quantum computers at room temperature.
Quantum computing is an emerging science that uses advanced physics to solve problems better and faster than conventional computers. Xanadu has said the technology can aid in the discovery of new drugs and the creation of more powerful batteries.
About two hours after the stock market debut, founder Christian Weedbrook said going public was a “surreal” moment and a testament to how far the company has come but now it’s “back to work.”
“What we’re all excited about now is that we can actually work towards achieving our vision of a large-scale quantum computer,” he said.
Xanadu decided to go public to drum up funding for the hardware and staffing that will be required to build that computer in the next few years.
Initially, it looked for capital in what would have been a $200-million funding round but generating cash that way can take years and Xanadu is in a race to develop quantum computing the fastest, Weedbrook said.
“To be perfectly honest, it was going slow,” he said. “We would have gotten there, but it was hard.”
When other quantum companies went public and generated huge sums, Weedbrook decided it was time for his company to consider whether that path was right for it.
Xanadu’s market debut was facilitated by a merger valued at US$3.1 billion with Nasdaq-listed special purpose acquisition company Crane Harbor Acquisition Corp. (Crane has bounced between about $8 and roughly $13 since May 19 on the Nasdaq. On Friday, its Nasdaq ticker switched to XNDU.)
The process is called a deSPAC, when a private firm becomes publicly traded after merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), in this case Crane.
SPACs are shell companies that raise money under the assumption that they will later merge with another firm and turn the new company public in an alternative to an initial public offering.
SPACs are unpredictable because investors can redeem their shares before the merger to get initial funding back. If a large number of shareholders opt for redemptions, it can dramatically reduce the cash the new combined company will have and may even put the firm at risk of failing to meet conditions it needs to complete the merger.
In the last few years, SPACs have become more popular but more recently, firms who used the model, including D-Wave Quantum Inc., have seen the downsides because of a high number of redemptions.
The US$302 million Xanadu is expected to receive from the go-public process is lower than initial estimates because of redemptions, Antoine Legault, vice-president of equity research at investment management firm Wedbush Securities, pointed out.
The company first estimated US$500 million in gross proceeds, which included US$225 million from Crane Harbor’s trust account, assuming no redemptions by the SPAC’s public stockholders, as well as US$275 million from a group of investors.
Weedbrook wasn’t surprised by the redemptions he saw. He said it wasn’t a reflection of Xanadu or the quantum computing market’s potential but a standard calculation investors make to decide whether to redeem.
He is still happy with the US$302 million in gross proceeds.
“If you told us we would have had that before we started, we would say, ‘Yes, please. We’ll take that,” he said while grinning.
Legault suspected Xanadu going public was its way of striking “while the iron’s hot.”
“If the valuations are high, you see that the space has momentum and you have quantum in your name … then maybe it makes sense to go public when valuations are favourable,” he said.
Kim Bolton, president and portfolio manager at investment firm Black Swan Dexteritas Inc., agreed, saying quantum computing is “one of the next big themes and trends in the technology area.”
“It may be young, but certainly by the end of this year and the beginning of next year, with all the progress that the scientists and the engineers and so on developers have made, it will be front and centre,” he said.
An investment risk memo his company put together said Xanadu’s revenue is still “limited,” so there’s no assurances customers will pay at scale for its technology, but purchasing its shares are one of the few ways to gain public-market exposure to quantum computing.
Legault counted five other quantum companies that are public and no others are using photonics — a science rooted in light — nor traded on the TSX, “so that will be good for Canada,” he said.
Xanadu was started by Weedbrook, an Australian immigrant in 2016. Its name is a nod to the 1980 song by the late Olivia Newton John, whose grandfather was Nobel laureate physicist Max Born.
It has an expansive downtown Toronto lab and is behind open-source quantum computing software library PennyLane.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 27, 2026.
Companies in this story: (TSX:XNDU)
