Google’s shares jumped 5.6% on Tuesday after unveiling its new quantum computer chip called “Willow”, marking a significant breakthrough in the field of quantum computing.
Willow can solve a problem in just five minutes that would otherwise take supercomputers around 10 septillion years.
Now Google plans to find practical applications for its technology, which has no known useful applications, high error rates and requires low temperatures, but founder of Google Quantum AI, Dr Hartmut Neven said: “That’s beside the point”.
Google is set to deliver a real-world use case next year, and could drive a shift in focus of tech companies from the current AI boom towards the quantum computing space.
In recent years, global tech companies, venture capitalists and governments have all poured billions of dollars into the quantum computing space, with the hopes of gaining commercial and military supremacy, with computing speeds millions of times faster than that of classical supercomputers.
Other quantum computing stocks rallied off the news with Google (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL) closing 5.6% higher at US$185.17. Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. has a market cap of $2.28 trillion.