Tower to Manufacture Photonic Quantum Chips for Xanadu 

23 February, 2026

The expanded partnership aims to establish an industrial manufacturing base for photonic quantum chips, bridging the gap between R&D and high-volume foundry production for future quantum computing systems

Tower Semiconductor announced it will manufacture photonic chips for Canadian quantum computing company Xanadu, deepening collaboration between the two firms as they move from research and prototyping toward structured industrial production of quantum hardware components.

According to the companies, the partnership focuses on developing a dedicated fabrication process tailored to Xanadu’s chip architecture. Several tapeouts have already been completed on Tower’s silicon photonics platform. The collaboration centers on a low-loss silicon nitride (SiN) process, integration of complex photonic components on chip, and the incorporation of photodiodes and detectors within a unified architecture.

The goal is to enable precise, stable, and scalable manufacturing of photonic chips designed to serve as the hardware core of next-generation quantum computers. Transitioning quantum technologies from laboratory environments to industrial foundries remains one of the field’s most significant challenges, as many systems are still confined to research settings.

Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Toronto, Xanadu develops quantum computers based on photons — particles of light — rather than superconducting qubits or trapped ions. In its approach, quantum information is encoded not in traditional two-state qubits, but in continuous properties of light waves such as phase and amplitude. This architecture allows operation at room temperature, without the extreme cryogenic cooling systems required by many competing platforms, and is designed to integrate into photonic chips compatible with industrial fabrication — a potential advantage on the path to scalability.

Xanadu is building a full-stack quantum platform spanning both hardware and software, including PennyLane, its open-source framework for developing and running quantum algorithms in conjunction with AI workloads. Since its founding, the company has raised approximately $275 million from private investors and international venture capital funds. In 2025, it announced plans to go public via a SPAC merger in a deal valuing the company at several billion dollars. Among its technological milestones are increasingly large-scale photonic quantum system demonstrations and commercial cloud access enabling customers to run algorithms on its hardware.

For Tower, the agreement builds on its expertise in silicon photonics platforms and analog/mixed-signal chip manufacturing for optical communications and sensing applications. As an independent foundry, Tower specializes in customized fabrication processes for customers, and is now expanding into the quantum computing sector — where the ability to manufacture high-quality photonic chips at scale could become a decisive factor in commercialization.

[Photo credit: Xanadu]

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Posted in: News

Posted in tags: Tower , Xanadu

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