Microsoft Build 2026: quantum chip targets 2029, AI wearables teased, and Nvidia partnership deepens

Microsoft's annual Build developer conference kicked off with a series of announcements spanning quantum computing, AI hardware, and a new operating system concept. The company set a 2029 target for commercially useful quantum machines, putting it on a timeline similar to IBM.

Quantum computing race

Microsoft unveiled the Majorana 2, a new quantum chip that uses lead instead of the aluminum common in rivals' designs. The switch, made with the help of AI tools, yielded a 1,000-fold improvement in some performance aspects, according to executive vice president Jason Zander. The company now believes it will have commercially useful quantum machines by 2029, the same year as IBM, which last month announced a $10 billion quantum investment.

The reason why people don't use it to build chips is it requires an incredibly specialized process to be able to go figure that out. And we figured it out.

Microsoft's approach relies on quasiparticles called Majoranas, whose existence the company claims to have observed. This has drawn criticism from physicists who say Microsoft has not released enough data to verify its claims. The publication Science last year alerted readers it was investigating the data used.

AI wearables and Project Solara

Microsoft showed two concept devices under Project Solara, a chip-to-cloud platform for building agent-first devices. One is a portable cube with a touch and voice-activated screen for a desk, and the other is a wearable access badge that hangs around the neck or on a belt loop. Both are designed to give users quick access to AI agents outside of a traditional PC.

When we think of a computer, we tend to picture something familiar: a laptop, a phone, maybe a tablet. But computing has never really stood still.

The devices are currently used by a few hundred Microsoft employees in pilot programs. The company has signed up partners including AccuWeather, Best Buy, and CVS Healthcare. The underlying software is an Android-based OS called the Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform, designed to run agents instead of apps and generate interfaces on the fly.

Nvidia partnership and RTX Spark

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang appeared via video link from Computex 2026 in Taipei, praising the partnership between Microsoft's software and Nvidia's hardware. Huang said agentic systems have made AI "now useful" and that "tokens are now profitable." Microsoft also unveiled the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, a compact developer PC built around Nvidia's new RTX Spark chip with up to 128 GB of memory and 1 petaflop of AI compute.

All of a sudden, because of agentic systems, the convergence of these rules, AI is now useful.

Data center efficiency

CEO Satya Nadella addressed environmental concerns around data centers, claiming the company's Fairwater facility in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, will use roughly the same amount of water annually as a single restaurant. The 315-acre site uses a vertically designed, two-story AI data center architecture. Nadella said Microsoft's Azure cloud business now covers more than 500 data centers in 80 regions, with more capacity added in the last 18 months than in Azure's first decade.

Perhaps the most important design criteria for us is, 'How do we earn the permission from the communities in which we're making these data centers?'