Xanadu is taking the entire 157,710-SF Building 1 on the former Campbell Soup factory site for an advanced photonics manufacturing hub, backed by $195 million in repayable federal financing.

The lease brings a technology tenant to The Birmingham, QuadReal Property Group’s 398,000-SF industrial campus at 60 Birmingham St. in Etobicoke. QuadReal acquired the 18.9-acre property from Campbell for $45.6 million in December 2018. The three-building redevelopment was completed in 2024 after most of the former factory was demolished. QuadReal preserved and restored the property’s Art Deco brick façade. Cushman & Wakefield had marketed the building for lease.

The quantum computing company said its facility, called Inception, will anchor the $893-million Project OPTIMISM. It will bring research, development and manufacturing under one roof as Xanadu scales its light-based quantum computing technology.

The facility will include clean rooms, testing and measurement facilities, and a systems integration centre where quantum modules will be assembled and verified before installation in server racks. It will establish capabilities for integrating, packaging, testing and assembling advanced photonic and semiconductor components.

Federal support is provided through the Strategic Response Fund. The investment will help Xanadu build domestic manufacturing capacity for technology with potential applications across artificial intelligence, medicine, finance and materials science.

Xanadu CEO Christian Weedbrook said the facility is intended to move quantum hardware from laboratory development toward commercial-scale production. The company is pursuing fault-tolerant quantum computers designed to detect and correct errors that limit the technology’s use.

Campbell operated at the property from 1931 until 2019.