Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled Majorana 2, the second generation of its topological quantum chip, at its Build developer conference in San Francisco, claiming the device's qubits are 1,000 times more reliable than those in its predecessor. The company said Majorana 2 achieves a mean qubit lifetime of 20 seconds, with some qubits persisting for as long as one minute. Alongside the hardware announcement, Microsoft said it is accelerating its roadmap, cutting its timeline in half and now targeting a scalable, commercially useful quantum computer by 2029, having previously aimed for 2033.
The chip incorporates several materials changes from the original Majorana 1. Microsoft replaced aluminum, the superconductor used in the first generation, with lead, and updated the semiconductor active region to a combination of indium arsenide and indium arsenide antimonide. Jason Zander, an executive vice president overseeing Microsoft's quantum efforts, said the materials switch was made with the help of AI tools the company developed for materials science [Source: BNN Bloomberg].
The announcement arrives as Microsoft competes with Alphabet's Google, Amazon, IBM, and several Chinese efforts to develop quantum systems capable of solving problems in medicine, chemistry and cybersecurity that would take conventional computers thousands of years. IBM recently received $1 billion from the US government to scale up a quantum chip foundry. On the financial side, MSFT shares entered the Build conference down approximately 12% year to date in 2026. Microsoft's most recent quarterly results, for the three months ended 31 March 2026, showed revenue of $82.89 billion, up 18% year over year and above the LSEG consensus of $81.39 billion, with Azure and other cloud services revenue rising 40%.
The Majorana 2 claims have drawn scepticism from outside researchers. The underlying findings are described in a preprint manuscript that has not been peer-reviewed [Source: Scientific American]. Henry Legg, a lecturer in quantum physics at the University of St Andrews, said that using more lead 'is not going to shield them from the basic scientific principle that your results need to be reproducible' [Source: BNN Bloomberg]. Microsoft executives acknowledged that trade secrets prevent the company from releasing all of its data publicly, but said the data has been shared in confidential discussions, including with DARPA, which is evaluating several types of quantum systems.
The scientific backdrop to the announcement is contentious. Majorana 1, which debuted a year ago, generated controversy in the quantum-computing community. Microsoft's approach relies on quasiparticles known as Majoranas, which the company claims to have observed but which had not been independently proven to exist. The journal Science has separately alerted readers that it is investigating data used in an earlier Microsoft quantum study from 2020, and some critics have said problems with data and protocols persist in the research released on Tuesday.
Sources: The Verge, Bloomberg, BNN Bloomberg, Tom's Hardware, Scientific American, BBC News, CNBC, Constellation Research