Microsoft said Majorana 2 replaces the aluminium superconductor used in its earlier device with lead and updates the semiconductor region to indium arsenide and indium arsenide antimonide. In its company announcement and technical blog, Microsoft said the change more than doubled the topological gap and produced a mean qubit lifetime of 20 seconds, with some instances lasting as long as one minute.
A qubit is the basic unit of information in a quantum computer. A topological qubit is designed to store information in a way that is less vulnerable to ordinary noise. Microsoft says its approach uses Majorana zero modes, quantum states at the ends of superconducting nanowires, to store information through parity, meaning the evenness or oddness of the number of electrons in the wire.
The company also said Majorana 2's qubits were 1,000 times more reliable than the previous generation and that the chip was part of a path toward a practical quantum computer by 2029. Tom's Hardware reported the same company claims, including the switch from aluminium to lead, the 20-second mean lifetime and the 2029 roadmap. Those are Microsoft's claims; they are not independent demonstrations of a working large-scale quantum computer.
Table: Majorana 2 claims and review status
| Claim or issue | Reported value or status | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Mean qubit lifetime | 20 seconds | Microsoft and Tom's Hardware |
| Longest reported instances | Up to one minute | Microsoft and Scientific American |
| Reliability claim | 1,000 times more reliable than prior generation | Microsoft |
| Roadmap claim | Practical quantum computer by 2029 | Microsoft and Tom's Hardware |
| Evidence status | Preprint, not peer-reviewed | Scientific American |
| Prior Microsoft Majorana paper | Retracted in 2021 | Scientific American |
Source: Microsoft, Scientific American and Tom's Hardware, 2026.
The technical distinction matters because topological quantum computing has long promised more stable qubits, but the field has also faced replication and interpretation disputes. Microsoft says the topological gap protects qubits from environmental noise and errors. The harder question for outside physicists is whether the device has proved the topological behavior needed for scalable computation and whether the evidence is strong enough to survive peer review.
Scientific American's current report said multiple condensed-matter physicists were skeptical of the Majorana 2 evidence. It quoted Henry Legg of the University of St Andrews describing the evidence as a small number of purported instances on one device, and Sergey Frolov of the University of Pittsburgh saying the preprint was not built on a research record he considered a solid foundation. The article also said an earlier related Microsoft preprint had remained unpublished since the previous summer.