Microsoft’s Topological Path to Quantum Computing at Scale

In a significant stride toward quantum computing at scale, Microsoft’s quantum hardware team has achieved a breakthrough in topological quantum computing, marking a key milestone in their nearly two-decade journey to build quantum systems capable of solving society’s most complex problems.

“Many of society’s next big challenges, for example creating more efficient batteries, are chemistry and material science problems,” explains Chetan Nayak, Technical Fellow on Microsoft’s Quantum Hardware team. “These problems are too complex for existing classical computers to help us solve, and that’s why quantum is so appealing.”

Microsoft’s approach differs fundamentally from competitors in the quantum computing space. Rather than pursuing incremental improvements to existing quantum architectures, the company has invested in developing topological qubits—quantum bits with built-in error protection at the physical layer. This approach, while technically more challenging, offers substantial advantages for scaling.

“Our qubits will be small, fast, and controllable,” Nayak explains. “Each of our hardware protected qubits will be less than 10 microns on a side, so you can fit a million of them in the area of a smart chip on a credit card.” Operations will execute in less than one microsecond, and the system will be controlled by digital voltage pulses, avoiding excessive input-output bandwidth requirements.

Landmark Publication in Nature

The company recently published groundbreaking research in Nature, demonstrating the ability to perform information processing in topological quantum systems. The paper details how Microsoft’s team designed a way to perform fast, accurate measurements of topological charge in physical devices.

“Our devices have Majorana zero modes which enable the superconducting wire to accommodate either an even or odd number of electrons equally well with almost no discernible difference,” Nayak explains. “Quantum information stored in this even or oddness is highly protected.”

This builds upon previous work published in Physical Review B, a journal of the American Physical Society, where the team successfully engineered a device that could controllably induce the topological phase of matter necessary for Majorana zero modes.

The latest advancement addresses a critical challenge: how to process information with topological devices. By coupling the wire to a quantum dot, researchers created a measurable difference between even and odd states that can be switched on digitally. Using microwaves to detect the signature that topological charge leaves on the quantum dot, the team demonstrated high signal-to-noise ratio measurements with low error rates.

Behind the Scenes: Microsoft’s Quantum Labs

Microsoft’s quantum computing initiative spans five sites across three countries, with specialized facilities dedicated to different aspects of quantum system development.

In Redmond, Washington, the company maintains sophisticated fabrication facilities resembling semiconductor clean rooms, but with unique adaptations for quantum materials. John Watson, who leads the qubit device development team, explains: “We focus a lot with superconductors, which are materials which can carry an electric current without any resistance.”

These superconducting materials, which operate at temperatures near absolute zero, enable high-quality readout circuitry essential for measuring qubit states. “By making our devices with superconductors, we can fit many, many more signals in,” Watson notes, comparing it to a radio that can pick up thousands of stations instead of dozens.

The fabrication process occurs in clean rooms where the air is “substantially cleaner than you would find in an operating room,” protecting devices from dust particles that could ruin them.

On another floor, Ben Chapman works on readout hardware using dilution refrigerators that cool quantum devices to temperatures “about 100 times colder than deep space.” These systems combine extreme cold with magnetic fields thousands of times stronger than Earth’s to create the conditions necessary for quantum operations.

The Path Forward

As Microsoft progresses toward scalable quantum systems, the team is addressing engineering challenges by moving more control and readout hardware into the cryogenic environment—an approach particularly well-suited for topological quantum computing with CMOS voltage control.

The multidisciplinary nature of the work is striking. “To solve a problem this hard, we really need people with a wide range of different backgrounds and perspectives,” Chapman notes. “We have electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, software engineers, chemists, physicists… people all over the globe.”

For Microsoft, the goal remains clear: building quantum systems that, when paired with AI and high-performance computing in the cloud, can address challenges in climate change, food security, and renewable energy that remain beyond the reach of today’s most powerful classical computers.

As reported by Microsoft Azure YouTube channel, the company’s unique approach to quantum computing through topological qubits represents one of the most ambitious efforts in the quantum computing landscape, with potential implications that extend far beyond the technology itself to some of humanity’s most pressing challenges.