22 Jan 2025

Xanadu reports Aurora, a networked photonic quantum computer built from 35 chips

Quantum technologiesPhotonics and optical computing
AI illustration · Illustrative scene, not a photograph of the specific device or experiment.

What was demonstrated

Xanadu announced Aurora, a modular photonic quantum computer built from 35 photonic chips, with 12 qubits and about 13 km of fibre optics in total, described as operating at room temperature. The company says the results were published in Nature and quantified optical loss tolerances, but its announcement gives no numerical loss figure.

Why it matters

Xanadu presents Aurora as evidence that photonic systems can be scaled and networked in modular racks. The result is a company-reported system demonstration, and it may help show that photonic hardware can be built beyond single-chip experiments.

Caveats

  • The company announcement is the main source for the figures here. The full text of the Nature paper could not be read, so its numbers are not confirmed independently.
  • The system is not fault tolerant. Xanadu's announcement names optical loss as the next major obstacle to fault tolerance.
  • The announcement gives no optical loss figure, so the loss tolerances reported in the paper cannot be assessed from this record.

Technology profiles

Sources

  1. company announcement
    Xanadu introduces Aurora: world's first scalable, networked and modular quantum computer
    Xanadu (via Newswire), 22 Jan 2025.
  2. peer reviewed paper
    Scaling and networking a modular photonic quantum computer
    Nature, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08406-9.

Last reviewed 21 Oct 2026.