Why Alphabet stock is skyrocketing today

alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) The stock is gaining ground in Tuesday trading. The tech giant’s stock price rose 4.4% as of 12:15 p.m. ET.

Alphabet shares are rising after the company unveiled its Willow quantum computing chip and said the technology has made significant new breakthroughs in the field. According to the company’s Google division, the Willow chip is capable of completing a benchmark computing test using random circuit sampling in less than five minutes – and one of the world’s current best supercomputers would take 10 septillion years to do so.

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Alphabet’s Google division released a report Nature yesterday detailed experiment results for his Willow chip. The experiment suggests that the company’s technology has solved a key hurdle in quantum computing.

Instead of producing more errors as qubits scale, Google’s Willow chip actually achieves lower error rates. The company also says that errors in its chip can be corrected as they occur. The performance improvement is being hailed as a major technological breakthrough by experts in the field of quantum computing and is also drawing plaudits from tech luminaries including Tesla CEO Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Although Alphabet’s Willow chip represents a major achievement in quantum computing, it will likely be a while before the technology has a meaningful impact on the company’s bottom line. The director of Britain’s National Quantum Computing Center does not expect commercial quantum computing applications to be available before the end of this decade, and he described the Willow chip and its capabilities as “a milestone rather than a breakthrough,” although he noted that the technology was most impressive.

Although commercial use of quantum computing is likely years away, Alphabet’s recent technical successes and overall position in this space are a bullish sign. The company continues to expand its position in emerging technology fields and successes in quantum computing could be an important long-term performance driver for the company.

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