What is 'quantum advantage' and how can businesses benefit from it?

Before 19 February 2025, most people wouldn't have heard of the name Majorana. That day, Microsoft announced it had created the first chip powered by “topological qubits”. These qubits (quantum bits), the company said, were built around elusive particles dubbed “Majorana fermions”, named after the Italian physicist Ettore Majorana.

Quantum computers rely on qubits that encode 0s and 1s of information, but also use quirky properties of atoms and other particles of the microscopic world to solve complex math problems that a traditional computer would struggle with – or to solve them much faster. Microsoft's topological qubits approach is just one of the methods companies and academia are pursuing to build these machines of the future.

Once fully developed, quantum computers should excel at tasks that need to go through a multitude of probabilities to find the best option. Say an airline would like to calculate the best route between Sydney and New York by optimizing the fuel usage of the aircraft and the duration of the flight. A quantum computer would be able to quickly go through many different scenarios and find the best option. The same would apply if a pharma company needed to create a new molecule by positioning atoms in just the right way during the development process of a new drug.

Novel materials, better predictions about the fluctuations of financial markets, improved manufacturing and design – quantum computers have the potential to open a lot of new doors for businesses around the world. Artificial intelligence (AI) should enhance quantum computing capabilities even further.

Several tech companies, including Google, IBM, Microsoft, Quantinuum, IonQ, PsiQuantum, as well as university labs around the world, have been making impressive progress in quantum hardware, software and algorithms over the past decade. If Microsoft’s Majorana announcement is the breakthrough the company says it is, it could accelerate the development timeline of fully functional quantum computers. Researchers believe that Majorana-based devices would be easier to scale than other technologies and less prone to errors.

Although some researchers remain unconvinced about elements of Microsoft's Majorana news, quantum computing companies’ stock jumped in the days after the announcement. More generally, folks at conferences and events that were even remotely connected to quantum-related discussions have started to casually slip the term "Majorana fermions" into conversations. Even mainstream news outlets have been covering researchers' recent efforts to push the envelope of this emerging technology.

Quantum computers won’t replace traditional computers, but they could surpass them in certain tasks. Specifically, they promise to be particularly useful in medicine, chemistry, materials science, finance and manufacturing. No wonder governments, academia and private companies have been investing in this technology and nurturing the talent needed to build a full-scale quantum computer.

But more of this kind of investment and support is needed. While quantum awareness seems to be rising globally, we must boost the level of understanding about where we’re at with the technology, and how close we are to the quantum advantage – which is when a quantum computer is able to solve a meaningful real-world problem that a traditional computer can't.

While quantum information theory work started in the 1960s, the possibility of actually building quantum computers was first discussed two decades later. In 1980, US physicist Paul Benioff and Russian mathematician Yuri Manin – working independently – both mathematically described the possibility of creating a machine that would harness the laws of quantum mechanics. In 1982, American physicist Richard Feynman took the discussion further with a paper arguing that it would take a quantum computer to effectively simulate the complexity of nature. This prompted researchers to start putting theory into practice.

These days, Google, IBM, Rigetti Computing and a few others are betting on superconducting qubits. This approach relies on electric circuits made of superconducting material, where at a certain critical temperature resistivity drops to nearly zero, dramatically increasing conductivity.

In November 2024, at its Quantum Developer Conference, IBM unveiled the second generation of its Heron chip, which houses 156 qubits and is already being used by its clients globally. According to IBM’s quantum roadmap, it plans to develop a fully functional and fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029. It’s taking concrete steps in that direction by working on suppressing errors and scaling the tech further.

In a recent IBM paper, for instance, researchers described how a quantum computer outperformed a classical machine in a few niche applications – evidence of what IBM calls “quantum utility”, or quantum computers doing scientifically useful work beyond brute-force classical computation. The latter is a method of problem solving in classical computing that involves testing every possible solution until the correct answer is found, versus a quantum approach that can test many solutions at once.

Meanwhile, Google generated a lot of excitement last year with a paper that described how its scientists achieved very low error rates on its quantum chip, Willow. The paper has been hailed as an important step forward by many researchers around the world – and rightly so. Error correction is a huge effort across the industry, with many companies and academic experts working hard to create qubits that would give error-free output, also known as reaching “high-fidelity”.

And these efforts seem to be paying off. Qubit quality is reported by different industry players and academia as getting increasingly better. Amazon Web Service's (AWS's) Ocelot, for example – which was launched in 2025 – has error correction capabilities built in from the start, according to the company. The chip relies on the "cat qubit", named for the famous Schrödinger's cat thought experiment in which certain types of errors are intrinsically suppressed so that it is easier to correct any remaining ones that may pop up.

There are other approaches to quantum computing too. Companies including Quantinuum and IonQ are trapping ions with lasers to make qubits and have been achieving fairly high-fidelity results. Operations with trapped ions are slower than those with superconducting qubits, however, so these companies are also working on improving speed.

Xanadu, PsiQuantum, Pasqal and a handful of others are exploring building quantum computers with “photonics” – that is, betting on light to process data. For example, Xanadu has just unveiled a new system called Aurora. The company describes this as the first photonic quantum computer that can work at scale, with several modules interconnected through fiber-optic cables.

Meanwhile, D-Wave has recently claimed to have achieved computational supremacy (when a quantum computer can solve a problem that a traditional machine can't) in quantum simulation – an announcement that two research groups are now disputing. The company said its Advantage quantum computers could simulate properties of magnetic materials, a problem that would take thousands of years for a classical machine to solve.

And then there are companies like Nvidia, which is using techniques including AI-driven algorithms to enhance the reliability of quantum systems. Nvidia’s approach involves simulating quantum error correction codes and optimizing error mitigation strategies. This is essential for building fault-tolerant quantum computers, which continue working correctly even in the presence of errors.

That brings us back to Microsoft’s elusive Majorana fermions – for which the company has yet to provide proof that satisfies its detractors. Even if this particular breakthrough doesn’t materialise, we must keep pushing quantum computing forward. If the quantum players are right, a fully functioning, fault-tolerant quantum computer could be a reality in as little as a decade.

Despite a rising general awareness of quantum computing, most businesses still have very little understanding of the advantages it could bring across many industries. So, as we are building the technology, we also need to focus on creating a quantum economy.

This will require investment – both public and private – so that research can go on in industry labs and in academia, as well as through public-private partnerships. According to research from Accenture, the world’s hyperscalers (providers of massive amounts of computing power and storage) continue to be the main investors in quantum computing. They see this emerging technology as the next frontier when it comes to cloud and aim to be at the forefront of the quantum-fuelled global transformation.

And we must also raise awareness of the benefits of quantum as early as primary school, solidifying that understanding in secondary school and at university, and then following that up with tailored workplace training.

This is how to nurture the top talent of the quantum future – not just programmers but also future CEOs across a range of industries. If they can see the potential of this technology for business, it will help the world to benefit from the quantum advantage.