New Delhi, March 2 -- Microsoft Corp. has announced a significant breakthrough in quantum computing with its new Majorana 1 chip. Stocks of other quantum computing firms, which were already outperforming big tech, have seen a ripple effect. If Microsoft's claims are true, the implications are broader: It believes this will lead to commercially usable and viable quantum computers "within years, not decades".

Unlike classical computers (which use bits-either 0 or 1), quantum computers use qubits (which can be 0, 1, or both), allowing them to perform a lot more calculations at once. While quantum computing has made big progress in recent years, thanks to investments by tech majors such as IBM, Alphabet Inc. and Microsoft, they have also bee...