Quantum Industry Canada (QIC) CEO Lisa Lambert spoke to Quantum Spectator in Singapore about Canada’s quantum ecosystem, the rise of quantum startups, dual-use technologies, the role of government in supporting deep-tech industries, and the opportunities for closer Canada-Singapore collaboration.
The interview was conducted on the sidelines of the ATxSummit in Singapore, when Lambert was in Singapore. It was conducted just after the city hosted a group of over 70 Canadian and Singaporean business leaders and government stakeholders for a roundtable focused on strengthening ties across quantum innovation, technology and industry.
To start, could you describe Quantum Industry Canada’s membership and the organizations you work with?
Our consortium works with almost 80 organizations across Canada, all in the quantum space — quantum companies and strategic ecosystem partners as well. Xanadu, Photonic, Open Quantum Design, Nord Quantique and others are all part of our membership.
We’re an industry-led consortium. We were founded in 2019 by industry leaders who knew Canada’s national quantum strategy was coming. They were talking to government and understood that this was a nascent industry, and that there was a need to work together to develop it. Through the National Quantum Strategy, under the commercialization pillar, we received investment. Right now, our funding is a mix of membership fees and government funding, but we’re not a government organization. We’re an independent non-profit driven by industry.
I don’t know of another sector, to be quite honest, where the industry was mobilized this early on. For a deep-tech sector like quantum, which is government-backed — as we saw with semiconductors, GPS, the internet, nuclear and space — you need that public-private partnership to move forward. Quantum Industry Canada becomes a key vehicle to be the voice of industry and bring key stakeholders to the table in shaping the sector.
How did Quantum Industry Canada get started? Were there already many quantum companies in Canada in 2019, and how did Canada come to have so many quantum companies?
Canada has been at quantum for a very long time. It was one of the first countries globally to recognize the quantum opportunity, going back decades. Canada made strategic investments in both public and private funding that built an incredible foundation of research excellence across the country. Four provinces were central to this: Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta. In Quebec, we recently saw Gilles Brassard win the Turing Award for BB84, which gives you a sense of how long Canada has been at this. In Waterloo, Ontario, the founding of the Perimeter Institute and the Institute for Quantum Computing around 2000 was another major foundation. British Columbia and Alberta are also big players.
Because of that foundation of research excellence, Canada started commercializing quantum before other countries even started doing research in it. Canada was home to some of the earliest quantum companies, with D-Wave being one example. If you look at 1QBit, it helped found the global quantum software industry back in 2012. Today, because of that strong foundation, Canada is home to the second-highest number of quantum companies in the world, second only to the United States.
It’s a big ecosystem, and it’s quite diverse. Canada has strengths across all areas of quantum technology: computing hardware, software, communications, networking, cryptography, sensing, navigation and timing. There are also key enabling technologies. Canada has a strong history in telecommunications, microelectronics, cryogenics and AI, which is feeding into this right now. All those ingredients are there in Canada, which is pretty incredible for a country of only 40 million people. Canada has definitely had an outsized impact on the quantum sector globally.
Canada has a National Quantum Strategy, and there have also been more recent announcements. When did the strategy come about, and how has it evolved?
Investments were made in Canada for a long time before there was a National Quantum Strategy. The strategy was announced in 2021 and came out in 2023. In 2023, Canada released two quantum strategies: the National Quantum Strategy, with three pillars — research, training and outreach — and a defence quantum strategy called Quantum 2030 from the Department of National Defence. Canada was one of the first countries, or certainly among the early ones, to have a defence quantum strategy as well. Both came out in 2023, and commitments have moved quickly since then.
There have been new initiatives since then. A couple of months ago, Canada released its first-ever defence industrial strategy, which names quantum computing, sensing and communications as sovereign capabilities. In the fall, there were also new quantum investments through the budget, including the Canadian Quantum Champions Program, which invests in quantum computing, along with other research grants and programs.
There has been a flurry of quantum investments, IPOs and major valuations. What do you think is pushing this right now? Are we at the cusp of something big in the industry?
We are at an inflection point that has been coming together for a while, and there are a number of drivers behind it. The technical breakthroughs over the last year to year and a half have been impressive across the board — from error correction in quantum computing, to algorithmic progress, to the application of AI in developing quantum and using AI for error correction, including work by Nvidia and others.
There has also been a layer of diligence brought to the sector that is giving it credibility. The DARPA Quantum Benchmarking Initiative is a good example, with rigorous verification and validation across the board. That helps give confidence and understanding in an area that can feel opaque and has a steep technical learning curve.
We are also seeing an increase in global defence investment. All quantum technologies are dual-use technologies, and many will be defence-first and transformational on the battlefield. In contested environments, there is an operational need for positioning, navigation and timing solutions, and quantum is a big part of that. There is also a clear demand signal for sensing, with more demonstrations and pull-through to deployment for quantum sensors.
We have also seen acceleration in quantum communications and quantum networking. On the security side, the first post-quantum cryptography standards came out in August 2024 from NIST, and many governments have followed with post-quantum migration plans and strong signals. There is a lot of convergence right now.
For quantum, timelines can be long — it is a very hard field — but from an investor perspective, that does not necessarily mean the exit event is far away.”
The opportunity to get a return on investment may be shorter, which is helping drive the capital landscape. Still, it is important to take a long-term view of the space.
Are quantum companies now working directly with enterprises on specific use cases and applications? Have Canadian companies, or their clients, taken up quantum computing forenterprise applications?
Speaking specifically to quantum computing, each company has a different approach. For the most part in Canada, homegrown quantum companies have been working toward fault-tolerant quantum computers. They are building long-term partnership relationships with customers and looking early at algorithms and solutions for very high-value use cases. If you look at their websites, you can see they are working with top brands internationally.
From those companies’ perspectives, this is an opportunity to get foresight into quantum and the disruption that is coming, and to develop expertise. Quantum is not simply a replacement for current solutions; it is a re-imagination of business processes. Starting early, even starting small, helps companies build that muscle.
Even thinking through problems from a quantum lens can help businesses learn new ways to do things with existing software today.
There is an economist from Canada, Francesco Bova at the Rotman School of Management, who coined the term “quantum economic advantage.” He has done work looking at enterprise companies that are early adopters of quantum and are already seeing benefits from learning in the space.
One Canadian example is OTI Lumionics, a startup in computational chemistry that develops materials for OLEDs. It was an early adopter of quantum computing and has been working in the area for about 10 years. The company is at the frontier of quantum simulation and has already seen benefits from working with the hardware available today. What it has been able to simulate has given it concrete benefits and put it at the forefront of its field.
How do quantum startups compete with giants like IBM and Google, especially when hardware is so capital intensive?
It is an interesting dynamic. With the giants of the industry, quantum is really a startup within that giant. They have focused quantum teams, so when you look at the numbers, it brings things down by orders of magnitude and makes the playing field more even. The capital context is certainly different, but there are advantages to being a startup, including speed and agility. Startups do not have the same rigid structures to work within.
In quantum, ingenuity matters. That has been an area of strength for Canada.
It is not just a matter of how many GPUs you can buy to get quantum advantage. It takes ingenuity to solve very tough challenges, whether on the research side or in the systems engineering needed to scale.”
That ingenuity is a secret ingredient, and a lot of startups bring it to the table.
That is also why many big players partner with startups in this space. Quantum is hard and complex, and the supply chains are also complex. I do not think there will be a single company or a single country that owns the full stack. Collaboration is needed — strategic collaboration between businesses, and also with trusted partners at the country level.
Unlike AI, where access to chips has become a key differentiator, could quantum be a more level playing field for countries such as Canada?
We will see how things play out. There is still a long way to go, but it is a very exciting time. What is interesting with quantum is that you cannot just buy your way to the top. Money certainly helps — it is not a cheap area to be in — but it is not simply a matter of paying a certain amount and becoming the leader. Ingenuity really matters.
There is such a vibrant startup ecosystem globally, with incredible startups competing toe to toe with the giants. You can see that rigor in the DARPA Quantum Benchmarking Initiative and the startups in Stage B. The fact that quantum is not locked up within the hyperscalers right now is really interesting and exciting.
We will see where it goes, but I see a different chessboard than what we saw for AI. There are strong foundation ingredients that perhaps were not present in the early days of AI, including a vibrant and mobilized industry early on, with startups and the broader community working together.
Singapore has committed significant funding to quantum, and Canada has done the same. What do you see in Singapore as a partner, and what brings you here?
There is a lot of history between Canada and Singapore in quantum. We had dinner with colleagues from the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT). I used to work at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and we were talking about how Perimeter Institute just celebrated its 25th anniversary, while CQT is celebrating its 20th anniversary next year. These are two countries that saw the opportunity in quantum early on.
There has been strong research collaboration, and strong collaboration in training and talent, between the two countries. Singapore also has exciting startups. If you look at both countries, they are trusted economies, globally connected economies, and economies known for innovation, engineering strength, research excellence and stability. There are many parallels and a lot of complementarity.
It is exciting to develop quantum technologies, but the real excitement is applying them.
Transformational technologies do not change the world when they are invented; they change the world when they are deployed.”
Canada and Singapore have complementary contexts for deployment, and both can act as regional hubs. There is an opportunity to work together on getting these technologies deployed and then bringing them to other economies. There is strong alignment between the two countries, built on trust, a common foundation in the space and a common vision for what is possible.
There are concrete areas we will be looking at for collaboration, from an industry-driven and commercialization-driven lens. More will come as we put this together into a memorandum of understanding. The idea is that this is not a one-off visit, but a multi-year collaboration on next steps. There was a lot of excitement, eagerness and practicality in the discussions about how to make this real and what next steps look like.
What role should government play in quantum? Can governments do more?
Quantum is the deepest of deep tech, and it is a government-backed sector, as we have seen with semiconductors, nuclear, aerospace, GPS and the internet. That foundation is key. Government needs to come in with a long-term vision because this takes time; it is not something done in a political cycle. We have seen that in both Canada and Singapore, where there has been stability, investment and commitment over time.
Investment in basic research is a visionary piece, and both countries have had that. It has put the foundation in place for Canada and Singapore, both of which have outsized impacts globally in quantum. We need to continue that. The research foundation will remain important and critical for decades to come.
The investment so far has certainly helped with talent. At the end of the day, this comes down to people being able to innovate and drive the sector forward. Right now, quantum is shifting from being more research-driven to being more deployment-driven, and adapting programs to focus on that next chapter is very important. Governments need to work closely with industry to understand that transition and make strategic plays that support a vibrant global industry.
Governments can also do more as buyers and procurers, especially because quantum is a dual-use technology and much of it will be defence-first.
In areas involving sensitive and critical technologies, trust matters. Having your government as a partner and buyer is a big stamp of approval.”
Government can also help on the enterprise side.
Governments have a role in catalyzing investment. Government demand signals, including procurement, and structured programs such as gate-based or milestone-based programs, can help drive innovation while bringing validation and verification. That is important for the capital story going forward. I hope to see more of this, and there is a lot that regions can learn from one another.
Lambert steps down as CEO of QIC this week after nearly three years in the role, and will take charge as Vice President, Global Strategy and Managing Director, Canada for IonQ. Sean Lee, who leads communications and engagement at particle accelerator centre TRIUMF, will take over as interim CEO at QIC in July.
