Before 19 February 2025, most people wouldn’t have heard of the name Majorana. That day, Microsoft announced it had created the first chip powered by “topological qubits”. These qubits (quantum bits), the company said, were built around elusive particles dubbed “Majorana fermions”, named after the Italian physicist Ettore Majorana. Quantum computers rely on qubits that encode 0s and 1s of information, but also use quirky properties of atoms and other particles of the microscopic world to solve complex math problems that a traditional computer would struggle with – or to solve them much faster. Microsoft’s topological qubits approach is just one of the methods companies and academia are pursuing to build these machines of the future. Once fully developed, quantum computers should excel at tasks that need to go through a multitude of probabilities to find the best option. Say an airline would like to calculate the best route between Sydney and New York by optimizing the fuel usage of the aircraft and the duration of the flight. A quantum computer would be able to quickly go through many different scenarios and find the best option. The same would apply if a pharma company needed to create a new molecule by positioning atoms in just the right way during the development process of a new drug. Novel materials, better predictions about the fluctuations of financial markets, improved manufacturing and design – quantum computers have the potential to open a lot of new doors for businesses around the world. Artificial intelligence (AI) should enhance quantum computing capabilities even further.
Building more investment and support for quantum computing | World Economic Forum
