Xanadu Says Its Optical Switches Now Lose a Third as Much Light
Xanadu Quantum Technologies and HyperLight Corporation said Nov. 10, 2026, that they have measured an insertion loss of 7 millidecibels (mdB) in an optical switch, the share of light the device loses as a signal passes through it. The same two companies reported about 20 mdB in 2025.
Switches of this kind route single particles of light, or photons, inside a photonic quantum computer, a machine that holds its information in light rather than in matter. The companies' release says a quantum signal cannot be amplified back up the way an ordinary optical signal can without destroying the state it carries, so every photon a switch loses is gone for good. Cutting that loss, it says, is what would let such a machine grow without large increases in laser power or duplicated hardware.
Xanadu said the switch was measured on a high-volume wafer line, on a chiplet platform HyperLight builds from thin-film lithium niobate (a crystal used in optical chips). The company said the parts showed "excellent yield and repeatability." The 7 mdB figure is the two companies' own: the release cites no paper, no outside test report and no independent measurement.
Christian Weedbrook, Xanadu's founder and chief executive, is quoted in the release describing the result as "10x lower than our closest competitor's most recent published result." Neither that competitor nor the result it refers to is named anywhere on the page.
The release's own forward-looking statements section puts the figure on a test bench rather than in a product. Among the risks it lists is that "the 7mdB insertion loss milestone achieved in testing may not yield expected system-level efficiencies, fault tolerance or manufacturing cost reductions." Weedbrook's statement says the result shows the company's switches are "ready to ramp to production"; the release announces no product, no date and no price.
Xanadu, a Toronto company listed in New York and Toronto, does not say in the release when the measurement itself was made.
