The world's largest cloud computing provider, Amazon, is working on its own quantum computer, according to a report in the German newspaper 'Handelsblatt'. "We have an internal project to build our own quantum computer, to develop software and algorithms for it," Oskar Painter, head of the quantum hardware team at Amazon Web Services (AWS), told the newspaper.

So far, Google and IBM have taken the lead on the path to commercial use of the new technology. While both Amazon competitors operate their own quantum computers, AWS has so far only used a marketplace of external providers. Now the Amazon subsidiary wants to get involved directly. "At AWS, we don't usually focus on problems that lie far in the future. We do the things that our customers want us to do," said Richard Moulds, Managing Director of Amazon Braket.

With the concept of quantum computers, research and industry are responding to the fact that the usual development of high-performance computers is reaching its physical limits. A quantum computer does not store information in the form of bits, which can only assume two possible states, namely one or zero. Instead, a qubit of a quantum computer can be both one and zero at the same time. The quantum particle retains both states until it is looked at or measured. This means that quantum computers can theoretically be many times faster and more powerful than conventional computers.

Google & Co in the field of quantum computing

Google has been working on quantum computing since 2006. In 2019, the search engine company claimed to have achieved so-called quantum superiority because its Sycamore processor with 53 qubits performed a calculation faster than the fastest conventional supercomputers. IBM has been offering its cloud customers access to its 'Q System One' quantum computer with 20 qubits since 2019. In June, IBM also presented its first commercial quantum computer in Europe with 25 qubits, which is located at IBM's German headquarters in Ehingen near Stuttgart.

In order not to be too dependent on US providers, the German government released a total of 2 billion euros for the development of quantum computers in May. The aim is to build a competitive quantum computer in Germany within the next five years and to create an associated ecosystem with potential users.