Amazon Web Services unveils Ocelot quantum computing chip after Google, Microsoft

Recent announcements of quantum hardware from big tech companies suggest the form of computing may solve real problems in the coming years

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Amazon Web Services’ Ocelot quantum computing chip is seen at the company’s quantum facility in Pasadena, California. Photo: Handout

Published: 11:00am, 28 Feb 2025

Amazon.com’s cloud unit has built its first quantum-computing chip, joining a growing roster of technology companies showing off futuristic hardware.

Alphabet’s Google and Microsoft in the last two months have announced their own quantum hardware, suggesting that the powerful form of computing – currently relegated to science experiments – may solve real problems in the coming years. Others said useful quantum computers, which might enable advances in chemistry or healthcare, were more than a decade away.

Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) new Ocelot chip, developed by a team working at the California Institute of Technology, comprises two tiny squares of silicon stacked on top of each other. The name is a play on words, referring to oscillators, which generate periodic electric signals, including in the prototype hardware Amazon developed.

“Five years ago, I could have told you, ‘I think I could build a quantum computer and could build it practically,’” said Oskar Painter, head of quantum hardware at AWS. “Today I can say with confidence we are going to build a quantum computer.”

Amazon Web Services joins Google and Microsoft in unveiling quantum computing chips in recent months. Photo: Reuters

Bits, the foundational units of computing, store information represented by a one or a zero. Quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, which reflect the probability of a one or a zero and can appear as both simultaneously. That makes quantum computers able to consider more possibilities exponentially faster than a traditional computer.