Microsoft has announced the world’s first quantum processing unit that uses topological qubits: the Majorana 1, “designed to scale to a million qubits on a single chip”. This is an amazing technical achievement – but does it change the timeline for quantum computer development?
The promise and threat of quantum computing
The potential power of quantum computing is difficult to imagine, but it will revolutionize society and science. It will help produce new medicines, provide more productive farming, and develop new materials – potentially solving many of humanity’s current intractable concerns.
When combined with AI, each technology will help improve the other. So, at some point, advances in AI and quantum computing will become better and faster – the combination will become a continuing and accelerating virtuous cycle. But before the major promise of quantum will come the first known cyber threat: the ability to decrypt the PKE that makes computing and the internet workable.
The attraction of topological qubits
The primary attraction of topological qubits for the development of quantum computers is the probability of increased resistance to environmentally induced errors.
The more common approach to developing quantum computers is to use superconducting or trapped ion qubits; but these qubits are highly sensitive to environmental noise. Put simply, such qubits can easily lose their quantum state and introduce errors – a process known as decoherence. Correcting these errors requires the addition of many more error correcting qubits to produce one workable logical qubit.
Topological qubits attempt to solve this problem by encoding information in the topology of a physical system rather than the state of individual particles. In theory, this makes each qubit far more fault tolerant, meaning that fewer are required to produce a general purpose quantum computer.
See Quantum Decryption Brought Closer by Topological Qubits for more information.
“This architecture is the dark horse the quantum community has been rooting for. Microsoft has been working on this for nearly two decades. The announcement is one of the biggest quantum breakthroughs of the decade,” says Rebecca Krauthamer, co-founder and CEO at QuSecure.
“Perhaps the biggest challenge in scaling quantum computing is making qubits stable enough to perform complex calculations with high fidelity,” she continues. “Microsoft’s Topological qubit inherently minimizes instability, helping pave the way for truly scalable quantum computers that can tackle real-world challenges.”
Technically, the Majorana 1 stems from Microsoft’s fabrication of gate-defined devices that combine indium arsenide (a semiconductor), and aluminum (a superconductor) cooled to near absolute zero and tuned with magnetic fields producing topological superconducting nanowires with Majorana Zero Modes (MZMs) at the wires’ ends.
That, of course, is just the beginning. But Microsoft describes the end result as a ‘topoconductor’, a transistor for the quantum age. It also says it “offers a clear path to fit a million qubits on a single chip that can fit in the palm of one’s hand”. It claims to now have a roadmap to effective fault tolerant quantum computation.
“Whatever you’re doing in the quantum space needs to have a path to a million qubits. If it doesn’t, you’re going to hit a wall before you get to the scale at which you can solve the really important problems that motivate us,” explains Chetan Nayak, technical fellow and corporate VP of quantum hardware at Microsoft.
“Microsoft’s latest announcement marks a breakthrough in bringing the reality of a one-million-qubit quantum computer closer than ever,” comments Carl Froggett, CIO and CISO at Deep Instinct. “It accelerates the collision between quantum computing and AI in ways that will disrupt if not completely upend, traditional computing and cybersecurity.”
Jason Soroko, Senior Fellow at Sectigo, adds, “The new architecture uses a breakthrough material capable of producing topological qubits. The topoconductor is used to create and control Majorana particles, which in turn form highly stable and scalable qubits.”
Iain Beveridge, senior product and solutions manager at Entrust, agrees. “Microsoft’s announcement represents a ringing endorsement from an industry giant for what many organizations have already been saying: Quantum computing is coming, and sooner than people think.”
This is a huge technical achievement; but the important question for security professionals is whether it shortens the timeline to meaningful quantum computers able to decrypt PKE; that is, a cryptanalytically-relevant quantum computer (CRQC).
“The Majorana 1 is definitely a major breakthrough and provides another alternative method of building qubits, with the primary two being superconducting qubits and trapped ion qubits,” confirms Troy Nelson, CTO at Lastwall. “The topoconductor used in the Majorana 1, if proven economically viable and capable of reaching economies of scale, could rival the silicon transistor, which revolutionized computing as we know it.”
Notice that ‘if’. It’s a big ‘if’. This Majorana 1 announcement is just one step along a complex path to a functioning quantum computer. “It’s an incredible start, but there’s still a road ahead. Scaling from proof of viability to a full-blown commercial system is no small feat—they’ll need to prove reliability at scale. Error correction will be another factor; even stable qubits need backup. And then there’s the practical side—building the infrastructure to make this commercially ready,” warns Krauthamer.
But she adds, “If Microsoft can demonstrate scalability, they could accelerate the timeline significantly. A less noisy qubit means you need fewer physical qubits to get to CRQC. A quantum computer that can break classical encryption is not a distant ‘what if’. Microsoft is talking about commercial quantum machines in five years, and this scalable qubit design is the stepping stone.”
Nevertheless, Duncan Jones, head of cybersecurity at Quantinuum (a firm immersed in topological qubits) adds, “Timelines are hard to judge but progress across all modalities is so rapid right now that you would not bet against the time to CRQCs shrinking even further in the years ahead.”
In general, there is huge praise for Microsoft’s topological technology, but less certainty on whether it might bring quantum computing closer. The CEO and founder at Atom Computing, Benjamin Bloom, comments, “I think this is huge progress in topological-quantum-computing, I just don’t know if that relates to progress in Quantum Computing or not. Only time and more demonstrations will tell.”
Perhaps the closest we come to an opinion on whether Majorana 1 brings a CRQC any nearer can be found in a blog from Scott Aaronson, professor of computer science at the University of Texas in Austin. “If Microsoft’s claim stands, then topological qubits have finally reached some sort of parity with where more traditional qubits were 20-30 years ago. I.e., the non-topological approaches like superconducting, trapped-ion, and neutral-atom have an absolutely massive head start,” he wrote.
He continued, “Topological qubits can win if, and only if, they turn out to be so much more reliable that they leapfrog the earlier approaches – sort of like the transistor did to the vacuum tube and electromechanical relay. Whether that will happen is still an open question, to put it extremely mildly.”
Microsoft believes the Majorana 1 could lead to a fault-tolerant prototype “in years not decades”. The unspoken implication here is ‘5 to 10’ years. Many believe it will be nearer five than ten. Strangely, that doesn’t make the migration to PQC any more urgent – it is already critical.
Phil Venables, VP at Google and CISO at Google Cloud, explains this in a LinkedIn post dated February 22. “Quantum computing is advancing rapidly. Innovations from Google, Microsoft, IBM and others are pushing the boundaries of not just the numbers of qubits but also their quality. We are well on our way to quantum computing being practical for real world problems.”
He suggests that assuming quantum will arrive at some point between 2032 and 2040, we have a seven year breathing space (note that some pundits believe quantum could arrive in just five years).
“If we are to be pessimistic (or optimistic depending on your use case) we have seven years to deal with this [that is, migration to PQC]. That’s a relatively long time, so why worry about this now?”
He continued, “The migration will take time and will be more complex than people think. Even though 7 – 10 years sounds a long time away, in reality the extent of the work needed might mean you are already too late.”
Marc Manzano, general manager for cybersecurity at SandboxAQ, sums up: “As we approach the ‘quantum cliff’, organizations must identify and secure cryptographic assets before scalable quantum machines break today’s encryption. The window for migration is shrinking, and a reactive approach is not an option,” he says. “Microsoft’s progress is a clear signal: the time to act is now.”
Microsoft’s Majorana 1 does not itself increase the urgency to migrate to PQC and crypto agility, because that urgency is already critical.
Related: Cyber Insights 2025: Quantum and the Threat to Encryption
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Related: PQC Standards Officially Announced by NIST – a History and Explanation
Related: Microsoft Adds Support for Post-Quantum Algorithms in SymCrypt Library
