(Image credit: Microsoft) Microsoft announced its next-generation quantum computing chip, Majorana 2, to an audience of developers at its Build conference in San Francisco. The new chip was designed with its Discovery agentic AI and with material changes to accelerate the company's timeline for a practical, working computer. In a blog post , Chetan Nayak, technical fellow and corporate vice president of quantum hardware, wrote that "To create Majorana 2, the Microsoft Quantum team improved Majorana 1’s material stack to create a more stable topological phase. Majorana 2 replaces Majorana 1’s superconductor, aluminum, with lead, and also updates the semiconductor active region to a combination of indium arsenide and indium arsenide antimonide.…