(Credit: Microsoft)
Some physicists are questioning Microsoft's February claim that it made a significant breakthrough in quantum computing.
The claims are "not reliable and must be revisited," says Henry Legg, a quantum physicist at the University of St. Andrews. Microsoft said its team made significant progress on a 20-year quest to create the first "topological qubits" with Majorana particles.
Legg says the company's work lacks a "consistent definition," and the results "vary significantly, even for measurements of the same device." Microsoft's quantum VP, Zulfi Alam, commented on Legg's post and called him a "pontificator" who didn't "bother to read the papers or even try to understand the data."
Microsoft published its findings in Nature, but its paper was not peer-reviewed. “While the Nature paper outlined our approach, it does not speak to our progress,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Nature in a statement. The paper was also published about a year after Microsoft wrote it. The company claims "tremendous progress has occurred" since then but does not appear to have followed up with a more detailed paper.
Another physicist questioned the news on social media shortly after it came out. "So, you mean to tell me that the thing we've been trying to for or the last, what, 20 years, unsuccessfully, and have been tearing our hair out...you guys just casually, no problem, did it?" she says on TikTok. "So are you going to elaborate on how you did that, or any of your results?"
Meanwhile, Amazon's head of quantum technologies, Simone Severini, said the paper in Nature "doesn't actually demonstrate" that it can do what it says, according to a newly obtained email to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Business Insider reports. He conceded that it "seems to be a meaningful technical advancement" but doubted it was a true breakthrough.
In a series of internal Slack messages, Oskar Painter, Amazon's head of quantum hardware, called Microsoft's quantum computing press releases "next level (in BS and hype)."
Amazon revealed a new quantum computing chip in February 2025, called Ocelot, and Google revealed its quantum chip, Willow, in December 2024.