Alphabet shares rise 6% after Google announces groundbreaking quantum chip

alphabet Shares rose 6% on Tuesday, a day after the company hailed its latest quantum computing chip as a “breakthrough.”

Google parent company on Monday unveiled “Willow,” a quantum computing chip that the company said performed significantly better on a quantum computing benchmark than its predecessor in 2019. Like similar quantum chips, Willow instead uses insecure “qubits” for representation of numbers of transistors used on conventional semiconductors. Google said its technology can reduce expected errors faster than they appear as quantum chips get larger, a bottleneck in developing better quantum computers.

Willow is the second milestone in a six-stage strategy to develop quantum computers that can run useful applications, Google said. The chip has about 100 qubits, but Google plans to eventually build a system with 1 million qubits.

“Willow brings us closer to running practical, commercially relevant algorithms that cannot be reproduced on traditional computers,” Google wrote in a blog post, adding that the experiment was proof that reality is made up of parallel universes.

“We see Willow as an important step on our path to building a useful quantum computer with practical applications in areas such as drug discovery, fusion energy, battery design and more,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on X.

When quantum computing matures, it is expected to be useful for large-scale simulations and code-breaking, but that may not be possible for years or decades. Google isn’t the only tech giant dabbling in quantum computing. Nvidia, Microsoft And IBM In addition to researchers from startups and universities, researchers are also working on the technology.

Google’s announcement was praised on social media by several tech industry figures, including: Tesla CEO Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

“One day we should build a quantum cluster in space with Starship,” replied Pichai Musk.