Elon Musk, Satya Nadella's X exchange on Microsoft's ‘breakthrough chip’: 'Exciting, right?'

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Wednesday announced that his firm has created an “entirely new state of matter” with the launch of Majorana 1, the world’s first quantum chip powered by a new Topological Core architecture.

The world's richest man Elon Musk responded to Satya Nadella's announcement post on X and said, “More and more breakthroughs with quantum computing.”

Following Musk's remark, the Indian-origin CEO said, “Exciting, right? We think this could be quantum's transistor moment…Just think of the implications for battery chemistry!” Nadella went on to congratulate Musk on the recent launch of Grok 3, the latter's company xAI's latest AI chatbot.

Also read: Microsoft creates an ‘entirely new state of matter’, Satya Nadella calls it a breakthrough

What is Majorana 1?

Majorana 1 is a quantum computing chip that is being called as a breakthrough due to its ability to potentially pave the way for quantum systems that can scale to a million qubits. Qubits are the basic building blocks of quantum computing. The scaled-up systems will likely be able to solve problems that can't be solved by all the computers currently present in the world clubbed together, according to Nadella.

The development of the chip was made possible after Microsoft spent 20 years on developing a new state of matter - topoconductors.

Also read: Satya Nadella stuns Indian-origin man with 4-minute reply to his email on a Saturday evening

This breakthrough required developing an entirely new materials stack made of indium arsenide and aluminum, much of which Microsoft designed and fabricated atom by atom. The goal was to coax new quantum particles called Majoranas into existence and take advantage of their unique properties to reach the next horizon of quantum computing, Microsoft said.

What happens after Majorana 1's release?

Microsoft is now one of two companies to be invited to move to the final phase of DARPA’s Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing (US2QC) program – one of the programs that makes up DARPA’s larger Quantum Benchmarking Initiative – which aims to deliver the industry’s first utility-scale fault-tolerant quantum computer, or one whose computational value exceeds its costs.