Shares of some quantum computing stocks are spiking after Microsoft announced a new quantum breakthrough yesterday,

and it's not the only tech giant placing big bets on the rapidly advancing industry.

Kate Rooney has the latest in today's tech check. Hey, Kate.

Hey, Mike. Good to see you. Yeah, so quantum computing is really becoming table stakes for big tech.

It's seen as the next frontier of computing with Microsoft, Google, and Amazon,

all betting on this future type of computing.

Google is still seen as the leader in what is considered by far the world's best quantum

computer at this point.

Microsoft, though, looking to chip away at that lead, unveiling Majorna 1, it's a quantum

computing chip, says it has also, as part of this, discovered a new state of matter, they say eventually that could leapfrog others in the space, or at least that is the expectation. I did speak to Peter Barrett on this this morning. He is an investor at Playground VC, longtime tech and quantum investor.

He's pretty skeptical, says Microsoft's breakthrough is still extremely theoretical and says the team at Microsoft has been working on this novel type of physics for almost two decades at this point.

It is something that could eventually translate into practical engineering

and that the update does move Microsoft closer to that goal,

but it is a step along what could be a long journey to produce those machines at scale.

Unlike Google, Microsoft does not have a working quantum computer at this point.

They published these findings in an academic journal yesterday or this week,

and then that real world impact and the hype, but that we have seen in this space, it comes from the technology's potential and what it could mean for solving complex math

problems using quantum physics, and hence the name quantum, could be applied to things like

drug discovery, think of aerospace, encryption, materials, genomics, energy, a lot more. And Barrett says,

at the very least, Microsoft news here, and what we saw this week proves that the leaders of some of the largest companies on the planet are now realizing how important quantum is and that he says nobody is willing to sit on the sidelines anymore.

And while there was almost no impact, he didn't see much happen to Microsoft stock on this news.

It did boost some of the publicly traded quantum names. I think of Raghetti. IonQ, you can see, saw quite the boost this week. This has really been a corner of tech that has been the speculative momentum play, de jure in markets as investors really try to jump on the next big thing. If you think about the breakthrough we saw from Google in the fall,

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