Amazon on Thursday revealed its first quantum computing chip, following recent progress by its cloud rivals Microsoft and Alphabet in the race to develop quantum computers. Amazon stock gained in early trading.
The company's Amazon Web Services cloud division announced the Ocelot chip in a blog post. While still a prototype, Amazon said its efforts can accelerate the timeline to offering viable quantum computing.
"Ocelot represents a breakthrough in the pursuit to build fault-tolerant quantum computers capable of solving problems of commercial and scientific importance that are beyond the reach of today's conventional computers," the AWS blog post said.
On the stock market today, Amazon stock rose more than 1% to 217.97 in premarket trades.
Amazon's Ocelot Quantum Chip
Quantum computers rely on so-called qubits to process and stores information at a much faster rate that traditional computers. The potential of the technology for scientific and technological breakthroughs has been on investors' radar for years. But the debate about when the technology could be commercially viable has heated up after a series of announcements from major tech players.
Amazon's move into quantum follows Microsoft's announcement last week that it has developed a quantum chip that utilizes a "breakthrough type of material." Google in December announced a new quantum chip called Willow.
Amazon Web Services is the leading provider of cloud computing services, followed by Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Amazon launched its AWS Center for Quantum Computing in 2019.
A major challenge for quantum computing, as AWS described, is addressing the errors the supercomputers make as they scale up. Small environmental disturbances like heat or vibrations can cause errors. Amazon said its Ocelot chip can reduce the costs of quantum error correction by 90% compared to current approaches.
"With the recent advancements in quantum research, it is no longer a matter of if, but when practical, fault-tolerant quantum computers will be available for real-world applications," AWS Director of Quantum Hardware Oskar Painter said in the blog post. "Ocelot is an important step on that journey. In the future, quantum chips built according to the Ocelot architecture could cost as little as one-fifth of current approaches, due to the drastically reduced number of resources required for error correction. Concretely, we believe this will accelerate our timeline to a practical quantum computer by up to five years."
Amazon Stock Down 9% This Month
Meanwhile, Amazon's stock has struggled so far this year. Shares are down 9% this month, including Wednesday's gain, and broke below Amazon's 50-day moving average on Feb. 18. Amazon stock is off 2% overall year-to-date.
Shares of the tech giant managed to gain a fraction in Tuesday trading, breaking a streak of six trading days with losses. Amazon stock also gained Wednesday after the company rolled out a generative AI update to its Alexa digital assistant.
Amazon reported fourth quarter results on Feb. 6, showing lighter-than-expected sales and a profit outlook for the current quarter that missed expectations.
