In the discussion on 2025 technology, the return of Ettore Majorana also took place. Or rather, of his name. The occasion was the news, on February 19, of the Majorana 1 chip, introduced by Microsoft to improve the stability necessary for the quantum calculation through the so -called Majorana particles, in view of its clearer commercial application. After its launch, Microsoft’s project was discussed and criticized by the scientific community, in a predictable dialectic between commercial ambition and technical reality that often characterizes these ads. It is not new that large technological companies refer to great scientific personalities from the past, including Italian ones, in their products. Just think, among other things, of the Fermi and vault micro -architectures of Nvidia, who accompanied the company led by Jensen Huang in the last decade.
The name of the Microsoft chip obviously wanted to pay homage to Majorana, the brilliant Sicilian physicist (born in Catania in 1906), whose genius and critical capacity was such as to be nicknamed great inquisitor among the boys of via Panisperna. The figure of Majorana, with his relationship with Heisenberg and with Fermi, has also become synonymous with mystery, as well as a great literary topos, due to his discussed and unsolved disappeared in 1938, investigated among other things in a famous book by Leonardo Sciascia.
The Majorana chip, having been announced by Microsoft, recalls not only the great debates of science and its protagonists but also the chances that the market forecasts are warned, in a sector at the center of the international debate such as that of quantum technologies. The 2025, designated international year of science and quantum technology, reflects a growing global interest. McKinsey projects that by 2035, the quantum technological market, including calculation, communication and sensing, will generate revenues of up to 97 billion dollars. The quantum calculation would be the main engine, with a growth of 4 billion in 2024 to 72 billion by 2035. Other estimates, such as those of The Quantum Insider, try to predict the order of magnitude of the employment opportunities of the quantum calculation, and speak of the creation of 840 thousand jobs in the next decade, especially in relation to finance and defense. Quantum communication issues are widely discussed by intelligence agencies and security equipment, first of all for the possibilities of quantum computers to overcome the current cryptographic systems.
By now, investments in quantum technologies no longer concern only the basic research, but have a character applied, not only by governments, but also in an ecosystem of already active companies: a process that had already been foreseen a few years ago by authors such as Raffaele Mauro, author of the book Quantum Computing (Egea, 2018).
The discussion on the commercial maturity of quantum technologies is lively. Just this year, in the same weeks of Microsoft’s announcement on Majorana 1, a demonstration has been proved to be. The leader of Nvidia Jensen Huang has in fact stated in January that, in his opinion, the commercial maturity of the Quantum would arrive no earlier than 20 years. Within a few hours, his words led to the collapse of the shares of the listed companies in the sector. A few months later, during the GTC, the main conference of Nvidia, a significant repair meeting took place: Jensen Huang invited the representatives of those same companies (such as D-Wave, Ionq, Quantinuum, rejects) and together they illustrated how quantum computers would not have replaced the classic systems, but they would have worked in synergy. In this scheme, the quantum calculation joins the parallel calculation of the Nvidia GPUs and the traditional calculation of the CPUs. The discussion of the GTC also underlined how the quantum industry is showing much faster growth rates than the law of Moore.
The global race of quantum technologies is also an opportunity for Italy that should not be underestimated. The United States can mobilize the capital of their private giants (traditionally IBM, Google and Amazon, more and more other companies, such as the aforementioned Microsoft and Nvidia) and China can leverage public and private investments and its gigantic human capital. In particular, the sector of quantum communications has long been of Chinese interest, even in spatial applications, a theme that Beijing also uses for its scientific and technological diplomacy, in the perspective of the digital silk road. Other areas are also positioned, from Canada to European programs, to the strategies of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. As shown by the recent Italian strategy for quantum technologies, Italy, although it has mobilized less significant investments than those of international and European leaders, boasts a strong academic and industrial competence in all the pillars of quantum technologies: calculation, simulation, communication, and in particular metrology and sensor.
According to the Quantum Computing & Communication Observatory of the Polytechnic of Milan in Italy, in 2024 there were 14 native companies in the sector of quantum technologies, behind the United Kingdom, Germany, France and in front of Spain. Some interesting realities are already moving, based on Italian research centers. An example is Planckian, born in Pisa (University of Pisa and School Normale Superiore), who tries to play a pioneering role for quantum chips. The startup wants to provide a scalable platform, able to reduce errors and increase energy efficiency. In the current design, each Qubit requires dedicated control and reading lines, bringing difficulties, noises and high costs that hinder the scalability of the various solutions. A new approach, such as the one experienced by this Italian startup, could lead to a reduction in wiring and thermal dissipation, with lower costs, and integrate larger processors, thanks to less control lines.
Let’s go back to Majorana. A volume of 2016 by the philosopher Giorgio Agamben, what is real? The disappearance of Majorana (Neri Pozza), had the merit of republishing the posthumous essay of the physicist, the value of statistical laws in physics and social sciences, initially widespread in the early 1940s. In this writing, also important in philosophical perspective, Majorana placed a fundamental criticism of absolute determinism, arguing on its “irremediable” contradiction if seen through “the most certain data of our conscience”. In the text, Majorana insists on the probabilistic character of quantum mechanics, and extends its approach to social phenomena, for example by suggesting that a simple, invisible and unpredictable “vital fact” can be at the origin of human events, giving uncertainty a role not only linked to the limits of knowledge, but within every complex system, both physical and social.
From the deep question about the meaning and characteristics of the
Reality, mentioned by Majorana, up to the reality of the market, 2025 is certainly a year of interesting questions about quantum technologies. The near future will be able to give us, in all likelihood, also some responses.