Microsoft claims quantum chip 1,000 times more reliable

Microsoft unveiled Majorana 2, a new quantum computing chip that the company says contains qubits 1,000 times more reliable than its predecessor, with the tech giant now targeting commercially useful quantum computers by 2029. The breakthrough comes from switching the chip's superconductor material from aluminum to lead, a change Microsoft made with the help of AI tools it developed for materials science. Qubit lifetimes improved from one to 12 milliseconds in the original Majorana chip to over 20 seconds in the new version, with some now exceeding a minute. The accelerated timeline represents a significant shift for Microsoft, which previously said only that useful quantum computing was years away rather than decades. The company has cut its roadmap in half, with executives believing they can build a fault-tolerant prototype based on topological qubits within three years. Microsoft is also releasing its Discovery agentic AI application to researchers on GitHub, the tool that helped improve the Majorana chips. The approach relies on Majorana quasi-particles, which had existed only in theory since Italian physicist Ettore Majorana predicted them in the 1930s, and requires exploiting a novel state of matter beyond the familiar solid, liquid, and gas states. The announcement puts Microsoft on track to compete with IBM, which also plans commercially viable quantum machines by 2029 following a $10 billion investment, while racing against Google, Amazon, and various Chinese efforts to develop quantum systems capable of solving problems in medicine, chemistry, and cybersecurity that would take conventional computers thousands of years. However, physicists remain skeptical of Microsoft's claims, with some noting that the company has not publicly released enough data for independent verification and that a paper published alongside the announcement has not been peer reviewed. Microsoft executives have defended their position, saying trade secrets prevent full data release but that they have shared extensive information with the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is evaluating the feasibility of Microsoft's approach.