Microsoft’s full-stack quantum hardware ambitions received a sharp blow with news that a key research paper in Nature that backed the company’s main quantum approach would be retracted. While other companies, such as IBM and Google, backed more traditional and better understood approaches to quantum computing early on, Microsoft sought to tap Majorana particles for its own quantum system.
By placing bets on this more esoteric model, the company hoped to leap into a leadership status. In 2018, Microsoft predicted processors using Majorana would be only 5 years away. Although that never happened Microsoft never shied away from its topological system as a long-shot bet. Then researchers began to have questions about the original paper, which is where their "research" took a serious turn and was retracted. That is a serious loss of credibility to Microsoft Quantum Engineering. The skeptics were right and evidence for the Majorana particle disappeared just like a ghost...
