With new Majorana 2 quantum chip, Microsoft claims dramatic breakthrough in qubit stability - SiliconANGLE

UPDATED 20:23 EDT / JUNE 02 2026 EMERGING TECH With new Majorana 2 quantum chip, Microsoft claims dramatic breakthrough in qubit stability by Mike Wheatley SHARE Microsoft Corp. today announced an updated chip for quantum computing called Majorana 2 that it says is 1,000 times more reliable in terms of qubit stability. According to the company, it opens the door to a much faster path toward building commercially viable quantum computers. Intriguingly, Microsoft said it developed the new chip with the assistance of its agentic artificial intelligence research platform Microsoft Discovery, which uses autonomous agents to accelerate complex research. The company believes it’s now on track to build a scalable quantum computer as early as 2029, slashing its previous timeline in half. The new chip leverages the same topological quantum computing approach that Microsoft pioneered one year earlier with the introduction of Majorana 1. However, it’s based on an updated materials stack that provides much more stable qubits, which are the fundamental building blocks of quantum computers. A path to quantum stability When Majorana 1 was introduced last year, the company explained that it used topological qubits powered by a “topoconductor,” which is a kind of hybrid material stack composed of an indium arsenide semiconductor and an aluminium superconductor. It said at the time that, by cooling the chip to near absolute zero and applying a magnetic field, it was able to engineer Majorana nodes at the ends of nanowires in order to provide hardware-level protection against environmental noise. Unlike traditional qubits that store data in the properties of a single particle, topological qubits store information across two or more Majorana particles. The information stored by each particle is defined by the “parity,” or the evenness or oddness of the number of electrons in the wire. Because the information is spread out, the qubit is inherently immune to localized environmental disturbances. According to Microsoft, the original Majorana 1 chip could achieve qubit lifetimes of five to 10 seconds, but Majorana 2 has expanded this to at least 20 seconds per qubit, with some lasting as long as a minute. This is a significant improvement and suggests that the company is close to solving one of the most complex challenges that has prevented viable quantum computers from emerging thus far: maintaining fragile quantum states long enough to perform useful calculations. Microsoft said Majorana 2 achieves greater stability than its predecessor because it has swapped out the aluminum superconductors for lead ones. This material is better suited to shielding the qubits from external disturbances that cause errors, the company explained. “We need to make improvements each year that will get us closer to delivering a computer that we believe will have massive commercial and societal value,” said Microsoft Technical Fellow Chetan Nayak. “We’ve got to keep marching to that roadmap to accomplish that, but where are we relative to last year? We’re 1,000 times better.” The improved qubit stability, combined with operation speeds that have been reduced to microseconds and the extremely small qubit dimensions, has improved Microsoft’s confidence that it can finally build a scalable quantum computer by the end of the decade, Nayak added. Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller said his first impressions are that Microsoft has taken a massive step forward in the race to build quantum computers that can actually make a difference to the world. “It had seemed like the industry had already settled on the materials science behind quantum circuitry, but then here comes Microsoft with a new chip that uses a special indium arsenide compound to make it 1,000-times more potent with 20 seconds of qubit parity lifetime,” Mueller said. “That’s basically unheard of, and the fact that Microsoft announced this during its Build keynote suggests that it’s now very serious about cracking the quantum computing conundrum.” Agentic design One reason for Microsoft’s optimism is the tremendous help it has been getting from its agentic AI research platform Microsoft Discovery. The platform uses autonomous AI agents to help researchers speed up tasks such as managing data, analyzing measurements and identifying manufacturing issues. Nayak and his fellow quantum researchers used agentic AI to automate many of the complex measurements they needed to take during the chip’s design. The agents also helped to optimize the chip’s fabrication process and analyze decades of research data to uncover previously unnoticed problems that could affect its performance. Because they work so much faster than human researchers, they can process information from across multiple scientific disciplines, and generate new hypotheses and identity patterns that humans might struggle to detect. “Agentic AI has permeated almost everything we do,” Nayak said. “It’s just become kind of a very natural part of our workflow.” Besides announcing the Majorana 2 chip, Microsoft said Microsoft Discovery is now generally available to every customer, allowing organizations to adopt the same automated approach to scientific discovery and engineering research. There’s also a new Microsoft Discovery app in preview, which can be downloaded and run locally via a GitHub Copilot account. Photo: Microsoft A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE: Support our mission to keep content open and free by engaging with theCUBE community. Join theCUBE’s Alumni Trust Network, where technology leaders connect, share intelligence and create opportunities. 15M+ viewers of theCUBE videos, powering conversations across AI, cloud, cybersecurity and more 11.4k+ theCUBE alumni — Connect with more than 11,400 tech and business leaders shaping the future through a unique trusted-based network. About SiliconANGLE Media SiliconANGLE Media is a recognized leader in digital media innovation, uniting breakthrough technology, strategic insights and real-time audience engagement. As the parent company of SiliconANGLE, theCUBE Network, theCUBE Research, CUBE365, theCUBE AI and theCUBE SuperStudios — with flagship locations in Silicon Valley and the New York Stock Exchange — SiliconANGLE Media operates at the intersection of media, technology and AI. Founded by tech visionaries John Furrier and Dave Vellante, SiliconANGLE Media has built a dynamic ecosystem of industry-leading digital media brands that reach 15+ million elite tech professionals. Our new proprietary theCUBE AI Video Cloud is breaking ground in audience interaction, leveraging theCUBEai.com neural network to help technology companies make data-driven decisions and stay at the forefront of industry conversations. LATEST STORIESSema4.ai's autonomous agent-building platform gets simpler to use, adds deeper business context and moreWith new Majorana 2 quantum chip, Microsoft claims dramatic breakthrough in qubit stabilityTrump signs scaled-back version of AI executive orderZutaCore raises $100M to scale up waterless cooling for AI data centersMicrosoft launches Rayfin to let developers and agents build app back ends on FabricPalo Alto Networks shares slip despite third-quarter earnings and revenue beatLATEST STORIESSema4.ai's autonomous agent-building platform gets simpler to use, adds deeper business context and moreAI - BY MIKE WHEATLEY . 3 HOURS AGOWith new Majorana 2 quantum chip, Microsoft claims dramatic breakthrough in qubit stabilityEMERGING TECH - BY MIKE WHEATLEY . 4 HOURS AGOTrump signs scaled-back version of AI executive orderAI - BY MARIA DEUTSCHER . 4 HOURS AGOZutaCore raises $100M to scale up waterless cooling for AI data centersINFRA - BY DUNCAN RILEY . 4 HOURS AGOMicrosoft launches Rayfin to let developers and agents build app back ends on FabricAI - BY DUNCAN RILEY . 5 HOURS AGOPalo Alto Networks shares slip despite third-quarter earnings and revenue beatSECURITY - BY DUNCAN RILEY . 5 HOURS AGO UPDATED 20:23 EDT / JUNE 02 2026 EMERGING TECH With new Majorana 2 quantum chip, Microsoft claims dramatic breakthrough in qubit stability by Mike Wheatley SHARE Microsoft Corp. today announced an updated chip for quantum computing called Majorana 2 that it says is 1,000 times more reliable in terms of qubit stability. According to the company, it opens the door to a much faster path toward building commercially viable quantum computers. Intriguingly, Microsoft said it developed the new chip with the assistance of its agentic artificial intelligence research platform Microsoft Discovery, which uses autonomous agents to accelerate complex research. The company believes it’s now on track to build a scalable quantum computer as early as 2029, slashing its previous timeline in half. The new chip leverages the same topological quantum computing approach that Microsoft pioneered one year earlier with the introduction of Majorana 1. However, it’s based on an updated materials stack that provides much more stable qubits, which are the fundamental building blocks of quantum computers. A path to quantum stability When Majorana 1 was introduced last year, the company explained that it used topological qubits powered by a “topoconductor,” which is a kind of hybrid material stack composed of an indium arsenide semiconductor and an aluminium superconductor. It said at the time that, by cooling the chip to near absolute zero and applying a magnetic field, it was able to engineer Majorana nodes at the ends of nanowires in order to provide hardware-level protection against environmental noise. Unlike traditional qubits that store data in the properties of a single particle, topological qubits store information across two or more Majorana particles. The information stored by each particle is defined by the “parity,” or the evenness or oddness of the number of electrons in the wire. Because the information is spread out, the qubit is inherently immune to localized environmental disturbances. According to Microsoft, the original Majorana 1 chip could achieve qubit lifetimes of five to 10 seconds, but Majorana 2 has expanded this to at least 20 seconds per qubit, with some lasting as long as a minute. This is a significant improvement and suggests that the company is close to solving one of the most complex challenges that has prevented viable quantum computers from emerging thus far: maintaining fragile quantum states long enough to perform useful calculations. Microsoft said Majorana 2 achieves greater stability than its predecessor because it has swapped out the aluminum superconductors for lead ones. This material is better suited to shielding the qubits from external disturbances that cause errors, the company explained. “We need to make improvements each year that will get us closer to delivering a computer that we believe will have massive commercial and societal value,” said Microsoft Technical Fellow Chetan Nayak. “We’ve got to keep marching to that roadmap to accomplish that, but where are we relative to last year? We’re 1,000 times better.” The improved qubit stability, combined with operation speeds that have been reduced to microseconds and the extremely small qubit dimensions, has improved Microsoft’s confidence that it can finally build a scalable quantum computer by the end of the decade, Nayak added. Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller said his first impressions are that Microsoft has taken a massive step forward in the race to build quantum computers that can actually make a difference to the world. “It had seemed like the industry had already settled on the materials science behind quantum circuitry, but then here comes Microsoft with a new chip that uses a special indium arsenide compound to make it 1,000-times more potent with 20 seconds of qubit parity lifetime,” Mueller said. “That’s basically unheard of, and the fact that Microsoft announced this during its Build keynote suggests that it’s now very serious about cracking the quantum computing conundrum.” Agentic design One reason for Microsoft’s optimism is the tremendous help it has been getting from its agentic AI research platform Microsoft Discovery. The platform uses autonomous AI agents to help researchers speed up tasks such as managing data, analyzing measurements and identifying manufacturing issues. Nayak and his fellow quantum researchers used agentic AI to automate many of the complex measurements they needed to take during the chip’s design. The agents also helped to optimize the chip’s fabrication process and analyze decades of research data to uncover previously unnoticed problems that could affect its performance. Because they work so much faster than human researchers, they can process information from across multiple scientific disciplines, and generate new hypotheses and identity patterns that humans might struggle to detect. “Agentic AI has permeated almost everything we do,” Nayak said. “It’s just become kind of a very natural part of our workflow.” Besides announcing the Majorana 2 chip, Microsoft said Microsoft Discovery is now generally available to every customer, allowing organizations to adopt the same automated approach to scientific discovery and engineering research. There’s also a new Microsoft Discovery app in preview, which can be downloaded and run locally via a GitHub Copilot account. Photo: Microsoft A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE: Support our mission to keep content open and free by engaging with theCUBE community. Join theCUBE’s Alumni Trust Network, where technology leaders connect, share intelligence and create opportunities. 15M+ viewers of theCUBE videos, powering conversations across AI, cloud, cybersecurity and more 11.4k+ theCUBE alumni — Connect with more than 11,400 tech and business leaders shaping the future through a unique trusted-based network. About SiliconANGLE Media SiliconANGLE Media is a recognized leader in digital media innovation, uniting breakthrough technology, strategic insights and real-time audience engagement. As the parent company of SiliconANGLE, theCUBE Network, theCUBE Research, CUBE365, theCUBE AI and theCUBE SuperStudios — with flagship locations in Silicon Valley and the New York Stock Exchange — SiliconANGLE Media operates at the intersection of media, technology and AI. Founded by tech visionaries John Furrier and Dave Vellante, SiliconANGLE Media has built a dynamic ecosystem of industry-leading digital media brands that reach 15+ million elite tech professionals. Our new proprietary theCUBE AI Video Cloud is breaking ground in audience interaction, leveraging theCUBEai.com neural network to help technology companies make data-driven decisions and stay at the forefront of industry conversations. LATEST STORIESSema4.ai's autonomous agent-building platform gets simpler to use, adds deeper business context and moreWith new Majorana 2 quantum chip, Microsoft claims dramatic breakthrough in qubit stabilityTrump signs scaled-back version of AI executive orderZutaCore raises $100M to scale up waterless cooling for AI data centersMicrosoft launches Rayfin to let developers and agents build app back ends on FabricPalo Alto Networks shares slip despite third-quarter earnings and revenue beatLATEST STORIESSema4.ai's autonomous agent-building platform gets simpler to use, adds deeper business context and moreAI - BY MIKE WHEATLEY . 3 HOURS AGOWith new Majorana 2 quantum chip, Microsoft claims dramatic breakthrough in qubit stabilityEMERGING TECH - BY MIKE WHEATLEY . 4 HOURS AGOTrump signs scaled-back version of AI executive orderAI - BY MARIA DEUTSCHER . 4 HOURS AGOZutaCore raises $100M to scale up waterless cooling for AI data centersINFRA - BY DUNCAN RILEY . 4 HOURS AGOMicrosoft launches Rayfin to let developers and agents build app back ends on FabricAI - BY DUNCAN RILEY . 5 HOURS AGOPalo Alto Networks shares slip despite third-quarter earnings and revenue beatSECURITY - BY DUNCAN RILEY . 5 HOURS AGO