Quantum chip laser firm Femtum to add 20+ jobs in Quebec

Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions (CED) will provide $1,950,000 to Femtum, a Quebec-based firm specializing in laser solutions for photonic chip manufacturers. This funding will allow Femtum to expand its manufacturing labs and accelerate commercialization, creating more than 20 new jobs in the photonics and quantum sectors. Member of Parliament Carlos Leitão stated, “We are helping businesses equip themselves with what they need to remain competitive, prosper and create good jobs,” as Femtum’s technology aims to reduce the carbon footprint of both quantum and conventional semiconductor manufacturing.

CED’s $1,950,000 Investment Fuels Femtum’s Quantum Photonic Chip Production

The funding specifically targets the outfitting of new manufacturing laboratories, enabling the Quebec-based firm to increase production of laser solutions for photonic chip manufacturers, with a particular focus on the growing quantum sector. This investment directly supports Canada’s National Quantum Strategy, designed to position Canadian businesses within the emerging quantum technology field and generate economic benefits nationwide. Beyond bolstering domestic quantum capabilities, Femtum’s technology addresses a critical challenge in semiconductor manufacturing: its carbon footprint.

The company’s innovative approach improves the environmental impact of both quantum and conventional semiconductor production processes, offering a benefit as industries increasingly prioritize sustainability. Louis-Rafaël Robichaud, Co-founder and President of Femtum, said, “The expertise is local, but the market is global.” This CED funding enables Femtum to accelerate the integration of its solutions into global supply chains. The commitment from CED recognizes the strength of Quebec’s optics-photonics ecosystem and the potential for homegrown businesses to thrive internationally.

Member of Parliament Carlos Leitão emphasized that the funding will allow Femtum to offer its laser technology solutions on a larger scale, stimulating both the regional and Canadian economies. The Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos added that the assistance highlights Canadian skills in photonics and further stimulates the quantum industry, demonstrating the government’s willingness to support ambitious SMEs. According to the government, this investment confirms Quebec’s position as a technology hub and solidifies Canada’s ambition to be a leader in the quantum industry.

Thanks to our government’s funding, Femtum will be able to offer its laser technology solutions on a greater scale and pursue its growth in the photonics industry and on international markets, which will also help to stimulate the regional economy.

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Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney has been working with neural networks and machine learning since the mid-nineties, back when a couple of hidden layers and a long afternoon of training counted as ambitious. She has watched the field go from academic curiosity to the thing quietly running underneath everything, and she brings that long view to quantum computing. For Quantum Zeitgeist she covers the ground where the two fields meet. That means quantum machine learning and the variational algorithms it leans on, and it also means the less glamorous but more interesting story of classical machine learning already doing real work inside quantum machines, decoding error-correcting codes, calibrating noisy hardware and learning the error models that simulators depend on. She writes about the hardware those algorithms have to run on too, and about the post-quantum cryptography scramble that the same hardware has set off. Her stories typically start with the paper, whether that is peer-reviewed work, conference proceedings or an arXiv preprint, with the source linked so you can hold a claim up against the research it came from. She is unimpressed by benchmarks that will not say what they beat, and by demonstrations that only work in the press release.

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