Microsoft claims its new Majorana 1 chip shows that quantum computers capable of solving meaningful, industrial-scale problems are just years away, not decades.

Quantum computing is heralded as the next frontier of computing technology. While it is still in its infancy, scientists believe that with its ability to solve problems that are unsolvable on classic computers, the technology could help power innovation in a range of fields, from drug discovery and smarter encryption software to manufacturing and AI.

The race to develop quantum computing chips is on. IBM launched the IBM Heron quantum chip over a year ago, and in December 2024 Google launched its 105-qubit Willow quantum chip that it claims demonstrates “state-of-the-art performance across a number of metrics”.

The biggest challenge with quantum computers is that qubits, the fundamental building blocks of quantum computing, are incredibly fast, but also extremely difficult to control and sensitive to system imperfections. As such...