A weekend, a microscope built by a master's student, and a stream of data. That was the moment Stephanie Simmons has described as the first real evidence that silicon could carry the weight of a quantum computer. Her lab at Simon Fraser University had just measured silicon spins for the first time, and the numbers said the idea was viable.
She had been drawn to quantum technology since her teens. She trained in Canada and abroad, then settled in Vancouver, where she leads the Silicon Quantum Technology lab at SFU. For years she lived the academic life: papers, grants, students, instruments that someone had to build from scratch.
Quantum hardware does not ship in a year, and investors have to be convinced to wait.
Then came a harder question. Was a university lab the place where a useful quantum computer would ever be built? Simmons concluded it was not. She has said she understood that the jump to useful machines would have to happen inside the private sector.
So in 2016 she and fellow Canadian physicist Michael Thewalt started Photonic in Vancouver. The bet was specific. Rather than building one giant chip, the company would use spins in silicon and link them with light, so that many smaller quantum machines could be networked together. Simmons became chief quantum officer.
That is a long road for a startup. Quantum hardware does not ship in a year, and investors have to be convinced to wait. For much of its life Photonic worked quietly, the kind of company that did not need a loud launch.
The turn came in November 2023. Photonic announced a strategic collaboration with Microsoft and US$100 million in new funding. Microsoft was among the investors, along with the British Columbia Investment Management Corp., the UK's National Strategic Investment Fund, Inovia Capital and Amadeus Capital Partners. Part of the deal was a roadmap for quantum networking and access to Photonic's silicon technology for Microsoft's Azure cloud.
In January 2026 the company said it had closed C$180 million as the first phase of a new round, with Microsoft and BCI returning. Existing backers coming back is its own kind of proof: they had watched the machine for years and chose to put in more.
Simmons also co-chairs the advisory council for Canada's National Quantum Strategy, so her work now sits between a company and a country's ambitions.
For a first-time founder the lesson is in the order of events. The conviction came first, from an unglamorous weekend of data in a university lab. The company came later, once she was sure the lab could not finish the job alone. Patient belief in a measurement, not a pitch, carried it.