Amazon on Thursday revealed its first chip for quantum computing, and said its design will help the company build highly efficient hardware systems.
The processor is called Ocelot, and the announcement comes as more tech companies tout their advancements in quantum. Last week, Amazon cloud rival Microsoft showed off its inaugural quantum chip. Microsoft had a paper in the journal Nature documenting its quantum work, and this week Amazon followed suit.
Some technologists hope quantum computers will be capable of solving problems that stump classical computers. PCs and phones run calculations and store data with bits that are either on or off, while quantum computers work with quantum bits, or qubits, that can operate in both states simultaneously.
“We believe that scaling Ocelot to a full-fledged quantum computer capable of transformative societal impact would requireas little as one-tenth as many resources as common approaches, helping bring closer the age of practical quantum computing,” Fernando Brandão, Amazon Web Services’ director of applied science, and Oskar Painter, the cloud group’s quantum hardware chief, wrote in a blog post.
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has funded quantum computing research for two decades, but the technology has been slow to make its way to consumers and businesses.
“That’s because they’re not big enough yet,” said Peter Barrett, founder and general partner at Playground Global, which has backed quantum startups Phasecraft and PsiQuantum.
At a million qubits, there are enough bits that the technology will work even if there are some problems, Barrett said. Google’s Willow, the world’s top quantum chip, features just 105, while Amazon’s Ocelot has only nine, Painter told CNBC.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in 2020, when he was head of AWS, that the company was “optimistic in the future that quantum computing will play a role” as cloud gets bigger in large companies and the public sector.
Six months after Jassy made those comments, AWS released the Amazon Braket service, allowing developers to experiment with quantum computers from other companies, including IonQ and Rigetti Computing. Microsoft’s Azure cloud has a similar offering. Amazon is planning for its in-house quantum chip to become available through Braket, Painter said.
In 2023, AWS senior vice president Peter DeSantis talked about building a quantum processor at the cloud group’s Reinvent conference in Las Vegas, promising more details in the future.
Like Microsoft, Amazon fabricated its chip internally. Building a system boasting a million qubits will take collaborations with world-leading semiconductor manufacturers, according to Barrett. Outsourcing to a partner is an option as Amazon progresses with quantum hardware, Painter said.
Public interest in the space has risen lately, Painter said, as companies have discussed new ways of assembling qubits that are resistant to errors. Amazon designed Ocelot to tackle the problem of error correction, and Google’s Willow also demonstrated improvements in that area, Painter said.
Painter estimated that commercial workloads won’t be running on quantum computers for 10 years or more.
At a meeting with analysts in January, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said useful quantum computers could be 15 to 30 years away. Days later, Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan that he isn’t a quantum computing expert but said most people believe it’s at least a decade from being viable.
Pat Gelsinger, Intel’s former CEO, is more optimistic.
“I stand by my prediction years ago — by 2030, useful quantum computing,” Gelsinger wrote in a LinkedIn comment on Wednesday.
A file photo of Hiroki Totoki, Sony Group Corporation executive, delivering a keynote address at CES 2025 in Las Vegas, on January 6, 2025.
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Sony Group shares rose about 2% Wednesday in volatile trading after the Japanese conglomerate announced a 250 billion yen ($1.7 billion) share buyback and operating income beat estimates.
Operating income for the last three months of the financial year came in at 203.6 billion yen, beating mean analyst estimates of 192.2 billion yen, though it was down 11% from the same period last year.
In the earnings report, the Japanese-based electronics, entertainment and finance company announced a stock buyback of shares worth 250 billion yen.
Sony also provided details on a partial spinoff of its financial unit. The company plans to distribute slightly more than 80% of the shares of common stock of the spinoff to shareholders of Sony Group through dividends.
The financial unit will list its financial operation this year and will be classified as a discontinued operation in Sony’s accounting from the current quarter, the company added.
However, Sony’s outlook for the current financial year ending in March was lackluster.
The company forecasted its operating profit to rise a slight 0.3% to 1.28 trillion yen, after flagging a 100 billion yen hit from U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war.
Yet, Sony clarified that the estimated tariff impact did not reflect the trade deal made between the U.S. and China on May 12 and that the actual impact could vary significantly.
A Samsung Group flag flutters in front of the company’s Seocho building in Seoul.
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Samsung Electronics on Wednesday announced that it would acquire all shares of German-based FläktGroup, a leading heating and cooling solutions provider, for 1.5 billion euros ($1.68 billion) from European investment firm Triton.
Samsung said the acquisition would help it expand in the heating, ventilation and air conditioning business as the market experiences rapid growth.
“Our commitment is to continue investing in and developing the high-growth HVAC business as a key future growth engine,” said TM Roh, Acting Head of the Device eXperience (DX) Division at Samsung Electronics.
The acquisition of FläktGroup stands to bolster Samsung’s position in the HVAC market against rivals such as LG Electronics.
FläktGroup supplies heating, HVAC solutions to a wide range of buildings and facilities, notably data centers which require a high degree of stable cooling. Samsung said it anticipates sustained growth in data center demand due to the proliferation of generative AI, robotics, autonomous driving and other technologies.
FläktGroup has more 60 major customers, including leading pharmaceutical companies, biotech and food and beverage firms, and gigafactories, according to Samsung’s statement.
Samsung said in March that its HVAC solutions had achieved double-digit annual revenue growth over the past five years, and that the company aimed to boost revenue by more than 30% in 2025.
