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MAJORANA 1:

A BREAKTHROUGH IN BATTERY MANAGEMENT

QUANTUM COMPUTING SYSTEMS TO EMBRACE AI

Microsoft has announced a major breakthrough in quantum material atom by atom and integrating Traditional battery management systems Moving on from this the insights gained may assist in
quantum computing with the launch of Majorana it into a simplified, digitally controlled architecture lack the analytical and predictive capabilities the design of ideal battery management strategies
1, the world’s first quantum chip, based on commercial quantum computing has moved closer to manage the increasing stresses faced by for all of the diverse demands of the energy transition
revolutionary Topological Care architecture. It is to reality. batteries due to faster and more frequent cycles. from frequency or voltage regulation and short-
claimed that this development “paves the way for Many only capture data retrospectively and in an term flexible capacity to peak shaving. AI-powered
quantum computers capable of solving complex Microsoft Technical Fellow, Chetan Nayak, states: incomplete, unstructured form which is unusable battery management could then also be designed to
industrial-scale problems within years rather than for machine learning systems. The result is that help consumers reduce energy waste, with AI being
“ Whatever you are doing in the quantum space
decades”. safety hazards such as thermal runaway, where further used to harness lessons learned from battery
needs to have a path to a million qubits. If it does
battery temperatures rise uncontrollably, cannot management to drive smarter future designs. A loop
not, you are going to hit a wall before you get to the
At the heart of Majorana 1 is the topoconductor, be predicted until hours or even minutes before a is thereby created in which today’s battery data fuels
scale at which you can solve the really important
essentially a new class of material that enables the serious incident occurs. tomorrow’s battery development.
problems that motivate us. We have already
creation of more stable and scalable qubits. This
worked out a path to a million.”
material has enabled the building of an architecture The consequences of this are now leading battery Reference: Guillou, J.M., ‘AI could be the Catalyst for safer, smarter
Energy Storage’, Electrical Review, Q1 2025, Vol.259 No.1. p.16-17
that can fit a million qubits on a single chip, which is operators to turn to AI to predict and intelligently
Krysta Svore, Distinguished Engineer and Vice
regarded as being a “critical milestone “ for quantum adjust battery cycles so that they can adapt to the
President of Advanced Quantum Development at
computing to achieve real-world impact. diverse demands of energy transition. This begins
Microsoft, adds:
with improving the quality of battery data through
The development has notably gained recognition “ This breakthrough brings us closer than ever the use of analytical tools that are customised to
from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects to fault-tolerant quantum computing, which is automatically find missing files, timestamps and
Agency (DARPA) which has selected Microsoft as one essential for unlocking real-world applications “. other gaps so as to create more consistent datasets.
of two finalists in its Quantum Benchmarking Initiative AI is thus being used to prepare battery data for use
as it aims to deliver the industry’s first utility-scale Reference: Uffindell, R., ‘Microsoft unveils Quantum Breakthrough by other AI applications.
Majorana 1’, Data Centre World, 20th. February
fault-tolerant quantum computer. By designing
The next step is to use the improved data to drive a
step change in battery management, for example by
predicting hidden causes of damage or degradation
months in advance so that smart predictive
maintenance strategies can be deployed to reduce
Visit our website! safety hazards and maintenance costs.
The same technologies can then be used to
proactively improve performance and longevity by
Why not head down to our website and
predictably optimising battery cycles. Tests have
read more news in our blog section? shown that AI can predict the perfect patterns of use
to reduce degradation and maintain a high level of
performance over a 20-year lifetime. It can be noted
Updated daily with hand-picked articles that the latest advances in AI can predict battery
from around the web... state of charge or state of health with an accuracy
of 98 per cent, sufficient to allow battery operators to
confidently predict how different usage patterns will
affect batteries.
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