Olivia Leng, founder of tech startup Meissner, working out at Avant Gym in Toronto.May Truong/JOBFlocks
Olivia Leng has an impressive and eclectic resume for a 21-year-old. The Toronto-born daughter of Cambodian refugees is a Royal Conservatory of Music-trained piano teacher, a certified lifeguard, a powerlifter who can squat 355 pounds (161 kilograms), past-president of the University of Toronto chemistry student union and an alumnus of the Next 36 program for promising young entrepreneurs and Creative Destruction Lab startup accelerator. She’s two credits shy of a materials science degree, but probably won’t finish because she’s too busy building her second technology company.
The goal for her latest startup, Meissner, is ambitious: to invent a high-performance superconducting material that could unblock a key commercialization challenge for two technologies of the future: quantum computers and fusion reactors. “We want to be the Corning Inc. of superconductors,” she said, referring to the U.S. ceramics and glass innovator.
That leads to what may be her top accomplishment so far: Convincing a slew of prominent Canadian tech entrepreneurs and financiers to open their wallets for her.
Ms. Leng is also a Royal Conservatory of Music-trained piano teacher.May Truong/JOBFlocks
On Tuesday, Meissner is announcing it has raised $3.6-million from investors including Anthony Lacavera, founder of telco upstart Wind Mobile Corp. and chairman of Globalive Capital, Christian Weedbrook, CEO of Xanadu Quantum Technologies Ltd., and Eliot Pence, founder of defence technologies developer Dominion Dynamics Inc. Other investors include serial entrepreneurs and brothers Michael and Richard Hyatt, prominent angel investor and ex-Shopify Inc. executive Daniel Debow, General Fusion Group Ltd. CEO Greg Twinney, Ada Support Inc. CEO Mike Murchison and Dennis Bennie, co-founder of pioneering Canadian software company Delrina Corp.
The financing was anchored by Business Development Bank of Canada’s BDC Thrive Venture Fund, which backs women-led businesses.
Michael Hyatt said the startup “could be a real winner.”
The initial problem Meissner aims to solve is in the nascent field of quantum computing. The machines under development, unlike conventional systems, don’t derive computational power from manipulating bits of information, but by tapping the peculiar properties of matter and light at microscopic scales.
Ms. Leng, seen here looking at her superconductor at The Toronto Nanofabrication Centre at the University of Toronto, said she wants Meissner 'to be the Corning Inc.' of its industry.May Truong/JOBFlocks
If proponents are right, quantum computers will vastly outperform the world’s most advanced supercomputers, which could open new applications in material science, drug discovery and financial forecasting.
If Meissner – named after a phenomenon related to superconducting – succeeds in its quest, Ms. Leng figures it would reduce cooling costs for quantum computers by 95 per cent, making them more commercially viable. She believes Meissner can also create higher-temperature superconductors than those used by early-stage companies trying to develop fusion energy into a scalable source of clean power.
“Ultimately we want to have a commercial product that we can start piloting with a company,” she said. “We believe we’ll be there in about 18 months.”
But many systems under development face a challenge: to achieve quantum effects, their superconductors – which conduct electricity with no energy wasted from heat loss – must be cooled to fractions of a degree warmer than absolute zero, or -273.15 C. The key input needed to achieve that temperature is a rare isotope called Helium-3 whose primary source results from the decay of tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, found in aging nuclear weapons and reactors.
Ms. Leng said the goal for Meissner is to invent a high-performance superconducting material that could unblock a key commercialization challenge for quantum computers and fusion reactors.May Truong/JOBFlocks
Ms. Leng and her small team are hunting for a new material they can use to build a superconductor that can operate at slightly warmer temperatures. It would still be frigid by human standards – well below -200 C – but warm enough that quantum computer makers could instead use widely available Helium-4, which costs about $40 a litre, compared to $10,000-plus for Helium-3. The materials would also have to be widely available, rare-earth-free and compatible with existing foundries, she said.
Meissner is using machine-learning models to conjure up potential combinations of elements that could become superconductors, and running simulations on thousands of candidates. The plan is to do physical lab tests on promising materials at the University of Waterloo’s Quantum-Nano Fabrication and Characterization Facility, to see which perform in the real world.
The science and opportunity may be intriguing, but several investors said in interviews they were betting on Ms. Leng as much as the company.
Mr. Weedbrook, who convinced others including Mr. Pence to invest, said: “the technology is great, but I’m only investing in her.”
“You never know if she’ll succeed,” but if she does, “that is something people would pay for.”
Ms. Leng at The Toronto Nanofabrication Centre. According to several of her investors, she is a consummate networker and persistent to a fault.May Truong/JOBFlocks
Mr. Lacavera said, “I’m investing in the person,” adding he relied on the due diligence of more tech-savvy colleagues before signing on. He was drawn to her resilience, maturity and thoughtfulness, and said he “wasn’t even close” to Ms. Leng’s level of sophistication when he was her age.
Mr. Debow said Ms. Leng made his “spidey senses tingle” when they met. “I won’t pretend I’m a deep tech expert, but I’m pretty good at picking out people who have a chance of being great entrepreneurs, and she just struck me that way.”
Mr. Debow likened Ms. Leng to Mr. Weedbrook, whose conviction around quantum computing similarly drew early support from Toronto’s tech scene a decade ago. “She will be an absolute steamroller toward this problem with focus, dedication, articulation and business savvy,” he said. “There’s no guarantees. But I felt she’s just someone who’s great to bet on.”
Many systems under development face a challenge: to achieve quantum effects, their superconductors must be cooled to fractions of a degree warmer than absolute zero, or -273.15 C.May Truong/JOBFlocks
Ms. Leng is a consummate networker and persistent to a fault, several of her investors said. She was a high-achieving only child whose parents rebuilt their lives after arriving in Canada (her mom is a nurse and dad works in furnishings). As a child she had a lemonade stand. Her first tech venture, InkTank, launched when she was 19, created a 3-D visualization platform so people could see how tattoos would transform as they aged. “We picked the wrong market; tattoo artists were not happy” at the thought of InkTank repelling clients.
The idea for Meissner came to Ms. Leng after she worked with superconducting materials during her internships at U of T. She saw momentum going into artificial intelligence for materials and drug discovery “and I thought, ‘We can take a similar framework and apply it to find new superconducting materials,’” she said.
May Truong/JOBFlocks
Ken Nickerson, a technologist and fellow at CDL, called her “a smart kid. It’s a hard problem, but she has a couple of PhDs helping and a nice collection of quality seed investors” and has made quick progress. But, he added, “God is in the details.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the name of the telco upstart founded by Anthony Lacavera. It is Wind Mobile.