Shares of Google parent Alphabet rise after quantum computing breakthrough

Shares in Google parent Alphabet rose as much as 6% on Tuesday after the company made a major breakthrough with its new “Willow” quantum computing chip.

The Willow chip takes less than five minutes to solve a problem that would take a current “major supercomputer” about 10 septillion years to solve — or “well beyond the age of the universe,” according to Google’s CEO. Sundar Pichai.

“We see Willow as an important step in our journey to build a useful quantum computer with practical applications in areas such as drug discovery, fusion energy, battery design + more,” Pichai said in a post on X .

The stock rally helped push Alphabet shares to their highest level since July.

The company’s shares have come under pressure in recent months due to investor concerns that Google will be broken up as part of the landmark antitrust case targeting its Internet search empire.

Pichai’s announcement impressed billionaire Elon Musk, who responded, “Wow.”

“We should do a quantum array in space with Starship one day :)” Pichai replied.

Musk has his own artificial intelligence startup xAI that competes with Google and is a major customer for chip supplier Nvidia.

He is also the founder of SpaceX, which makes the Starship spacecraft and the Starlink internet satellite service.

Quantum computers use subatomic quantum bits, or “qubits,” to process data much faster than conventional binary computers.

Since qubits are known to be prone to errors, Google and other competitors have sought ways to make the devices more reliable.

Google did not include any concrete examples of real-world applications for Willow in a blog post detailing the discovery.

However, the company said Willow “can reduce errors exponentially as we scale using more qubits” and “exploits a major challenge in quantum error correction.”

While it is many years away from mainstream adoption, the technology is expected to play a key role in the development of advanced AI systems.

“Willow marks an important step toward the eventual commercialization of quantum computing — something that could have significant implications for many industries, as well as data and national security,” Baird analyst Colin Sebastian said of the announcement, according to Bloomberg.