Microsoft Introduces Majorana 1, Paving The Way For Scalable Quantum Computing

Microsoft introduced this Wednesday its first quantum computing chip, Majorana 1, a technology developed over 20 years.

According to the tech giant’s official announcement, the hardware represents the “world’s first Quantum Processing Unit (QPU) powered by a Topological Core.”

The chip has been designed to scale to a million qubits—the popular unit used in quantum computing, quantum bit—and they have built 8 chips so far.

One of the most significant achievements that Microsoft’s scientists managed to reach is the topological state, a new state of matter that was first proposed in 1997 by the Russian American scientist Alexei Kitaev, as reported by the New York Times.

They created the first “topoconductor,” allowing them to develop topological superconductivity, and combine aluminum (a superconductor) and arsenide (a semiconductor) at very low temperatures, adjusted with magnetic fields. The “magic” to their quantum chips.

Microsoft published yesterday a paper with the details of the groundbreaking research in the science journal Nature as well.

“This revolutionary class of materials enables us to create topological superconductivity, a new state of matter that previously existed only in theory,” wrote Dr.Chetan Nayak, Microsoft’s Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President of Quantum Hardware.

The tech giant shared also a video of the new technology, explaining how they conceived and developed Majorana 1 and its potential for the future of humanity.

In December 2024, Google unveiled its first quantum chip, Willow, capable of performing complex computations in under five minutes that would take today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years.

Now, Microsoft is entering the quantum computing race with a brand-new product, a revolutionary strategy, and groundbreaking research. However, this technology is still in its early stages, and the chip must undergo extensive testing and development—a process that could take years but, optimistically, not decades, as previously predicted—to determine whether it can truly accelerate quantum computing.