Why Alphabet Stock Is Jumping Today | The Motley Fool

Alphabet (GOOGL 5.20%) (GOOG 4.97%) stock is gaining ground in Tuesday’s trading. The tech giant’s share price was up 4.4% as of 12:15 p.m. ET.

Alphabet stock is climbing after the company revealed its Willow quantum computing chip and said that the technology has achieved significant new breakthroughs in the field. According to the company’s Google division, the Willow chip is capable of completing a random-circuit-sampling benchmark computing test in under five minutes — and it would take one of the world’s current top supercomputers 10 septillion years to achieve the feat.

Google’s Willow chip just did something incredible

Alphabet’s Google division published a report in Nature yesterday detailing experiment results for its Willow chip. The experiment suggests that the company’s technology has solved a key hurdle in quantum computing.

Rather than producing more errors as qubits are scaled, Google’s Willow chip is actually achieving lower error rates. The company also says that errors in its chip are capable of being corrected upon occurrence. The performance improvement is being heralded as a major technological breakthrough among experts in the quantum computing field, and it’s also garnered applause from tech luminaries, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

What’s next for Alphabet in quantum computing?

While Alphabet’s Willow chip represents a major achievement in quantum computing, it will likely be a while before the technology has a meaningful impact on the company’s bottom line. The director of the U.K.’s National Quantum Computing Centre doesn’t expect commercial quantum computing applications to arrive before the end of this decade, and he described the Willow chip and its capabilities as a “milestone rather than a breakthrough,” despite noting that the technology was highly impressive.

But while commercial quantum computing uses are likely still years away, Alphabet’s recent tech achievement and overall position in the space is a bullish signal. The company is continuing to strengthen its position in emerging tech fields, and wins in quantum computing could wind up being a major performance driver for the business over the long term.