Latest news with #JasonZander
Business Mayor
19-05-2025
- Business
- Business Mayor
Microsoft just launched an AI that discovered a new chemical in 200 hours instead of years
Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Microsoft launched a new enterprise platform that harnesses artificial intelligence to dramatically accelerate scientific research and development, potentially compressing years of laboratory work into weeks or even days. The platform, called Microsoft Discovery, leverages specialized AI agents and high-performance computing to help scientists and engineers tackle complex research challenges without requiring them to write code, the company announced Monday at its annual Build developer conference. 'What we're doing is really taking a look at how we can apply advancements in agentic AI and compute work, and then on to quantum computing, and apply it in the really important space, which is science,' said Jason Zander, Corporate Vice President of Strategic Missions and Technologies at Microsoft, in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat. The system has already demonstrated its potential in Microsoft's own research, where it helped discover a novel coolant for immersion cooling of data centers in approximately 200 hours — a process that traditionally would have taken months or years. 'In 200 hours with this framework, we were able to go through and screen 367,000 potential candidates that we came up with,' Zander explained. 'We actually took it to a partner, and they actually synthesized it.' Microsoft Discovery represents a significant step toward democratizing advanced scientific tools, allowing researchers to interact with supercomputers and complex simulations using natural language rather than requiring specialized programming skills. 'It's about empowering scientists to transform the entire discovery process with agentic AI,' Zander emphasized. 'My PhD is in biology. I'm not a computer scientist, but if you can unlock that power of a supercomputer just by allowing me to prompt it, that's very powerful.' The platform addresses a key challenge in scientific research: the disconnect between domain expertise and computational skills. Traditionally, scientists would need to learn programming to leverage advanced computing tools, creating a bottleneck in the research process. This democratization could prove particularly valuable for smaller research institutions that lack the resources to hire computational specialists to augment their scientific teams. By allowing domain experts to directly query complex simulations and run experiments through natural language, Microsoft is effectively lowering the barrier to entry for cutting-edge research techniques. 'As a scientist, I'm a biologist. I don't know how to write computer code. I don't want to spend all my time going into an editor and writing scripts and stuff to ask a supercomputer to do something,' Zander said. 'I just wanted, like, this is what I want in plain English or plain language, and go do it.' Microsoft Discovery operates through what Zander described as a team of AI 'postdocs' — specialized agents that can perform different aspects of the scientific process, from literature review to computational simulations. 'These postdoc agents do that work,' Zander explained. 'It's like having a team of folks that just got their PhD. They're like residents in medicine — you're in the hospital, but you're still finishing.' The platform combines two key components: foundational models that handle planning and specialized models trained for particular scientific domains like physics, chemistry, and biology. What makes this approach unique is how it blends general AI capabilities with deeply specialized scientific knowledge. 'The core process, you'll find two parts of this,' Zander said. 'One is we're using foundational models for doing the planning. The other piece is, on the AI side, a set of models that are designed specifically for particular domains of science, that includes physics, chemistry, biology.' According to a company statement, Microsoft Discovery is built on a 'graph-based knowledge engine' that constructs nuanced relationships between proprietary data and external scientific research. This allows it to understand conflicting theories and diverse experimental results across disciplines, while maintaining transparency by tracking sources and reasoning processes. At the center of the user experience is a Copilot interface that orchestrates these specialized agents based on researcher prompts, identifying which agents to leverage and setting up end-to-end workflows. This interface essentially acts as the central hub where human scientists can guide their virtual research team. To demonstrate the platform's capabilities, Microsoft used Microsoft Discovery to address a pressing challenge in data center technology: finding alternatives to coolants containing PFAS, so-called 'forever chemicals' that are increasingly facing regulatory restrictions. Current data center cooling methods often rely on harmful chemicals that are becoming untenable as global regulations push to ban these substances. Microsoft researchers used the platform to screen hundreds of thousands of potential alternatives. 'We did prototypes on this. Actually, when I owned Azure, I did a prototype eight years ago, and it works super well, actually,' Zander said. 'It's actually like 60 to 90% more efficient than just air cooling. The big problem is that coolant material that's on market has PFAS in it.' After identifying promising candidates, Microsoft synthesized the coolant and demonstrated it cooling a GPU running a video game. While this specific application remains experimental, it illustrates how Microsoft Discovery can compress development timelines for companies facing regulatory challenges. The implications extend far beyond Microsoft's own data centers. Any industry facing similar regulatory pressure to replace established chemicals or materials could potentially use this approach to accelerate their R&D cycles dramatically. What once would have been multi-year development processes might now be completed in a matter of months. Daniel Pope, founder of Submer, a company focused on sustainable data centers, was quoted in the press release saying: 'The speed and depth of molecular screening achieved by Microsoft Discovery would've been impossible with traditional methods. What once took years of lab work and trial-and-error, Microsoft Discovery can accomplish in just weeks, and with greater confidence.' Microsoft is building an ecosystem of partners across diverse industries to implement the platform, indicating its broad applicability beyond the company's internal research needs. Pharmaceutical giant GSK is exploring the platform for its potential to transform medicinal chemistry. The company stated an intent to partner with Microsoft to advance 'GSK's generative platforms for parallel prediction and testing, creating new medicines with greater speed and precision.' In the consumer space, Estée Lauder plans to harness Microsoft Discovery to accelerate product development in skincare, makeup, and fragrance. 'The Microsoft Discovery platform will help us to unleash the power of our data to drive fast, agile, breakthrough innovation and high-quality, personalized products that will delight our consumers,' said Kosmas Kretsos, PhD, MBA, Vice President of R&D and Innovation Technology at Estée Lauder Companies. Microsoft is also expanding its partnership with Nvidia to integrate Nvidia's ALCHEMI and BioNeMo NIM microservices with Microsoft Discovery, enabling faster breakthroughs in materials and life sciences. This partnership will allow researchers to leverage state-of-the-art inference capabilities for candidate identification, property mapping, and synthetic data generation. 'AI is dramatically accelerating the pace of scientific discovery,' said Dion Harris, senior director of accelerated data center solutions at Nvidia. 'By integrating Nvidia ALCHEMI and BioNeMo NIM microservices into Azure Discovery, we're giving scientists the ability to move from data to discovery with unprecedented speed, scale, and efficiency.' Read More Hewlett Packard Enterprise to acquire Juniper Networks - Verdict In the semiconductor space, Microsoft plans to integrate Synopsys' industry solutions to accelerate chip design and development. Sassine Ghazi, President and CEO of Synopsys, described semiconductor engineering as 'among the most complex, consequential and high-stakes scientific endeavors of our time,' making it 'an extremely compelling use case for artificial intelligence.' System integrators Accenture and Capgemini will help customers implement and scale Microsoft Discovery deployments, bridging the gap between Microsoft's technology and industry-specific applications. Microsoft Discovery also represents a stepping stone toward the company's broader quantum computing ambitions. Zander explained that while the platform currently uses conventional high-performance computing, it's designed with future quantum capabilities in mind. 'Science is a hero scenario for a quantum computer,' Zander said. 'If you ask yourself, what can a quantum computer do? It's extremely good at exploring complicated problem spaces that classic computers just aren't able to do.' Microsoft recently announced advancements in quantum computing with its Majorana one chip, which the company claims could potentially fit a million qubits 'in the palm of your hand' — compared to competing approaches that might require 'a football field worth of equipment.' 'General generative chemistry — we think the hero scenario for high-scale quantum computers is actually chemistry,' Zander explained. 'Because what it can do is take a small amount of data and explore a space that would take millions of years for a classic, even the largest supercomputer, to do.' This connection between today's AI-driven discovery platform and tomorrow's quantum computers reveals Microsoft's long-term strategy: building the software infrastructure and user experience today that will eventually harness the revolutionary capabilities of quantum computing when the hardware matures. Zander envisions a future where quantum computers design their own successors: 'One of the first things that I want to do when I get the quantum computer that does that kind of work is I'm going to go give it my material stack for my chip. I'm going to basically say, 'Okay, go simulate that sucker. Tell me how I build a new, a better, new version of you.'' With the powerful capabilities Microsoft Discovery offers, questions about potential misuse naturally arise. Zander emphasized that the platform incorporates Microsoft's responsible AI framework. 'We have the responsible AI program, and it's been around, actually I think we were one of the first companies to actually put that kind of framework into place,' Zander said. 'Discovery absolutely is following all responsible AI guidelines.' These safeguards include ethical use guidelines and content moderation similar to those implemented in consumer AI systems, but tailored for scientific applications. The company appears to be taking a proactive approach to identifying potential misuse scenarios. 'We already look for particular types of algorithms that could be harmful and try and flag those in content moderation style,' Zander explained. 'Again, the analogy would be very similar to what a consumer kind of bot would do.' This focus on responsible innovation reflects the dual-use nature of powerful scientific tools — the same platform that could accelerate lifesaving drug discovery could potentially be misused in other contexts. Microsoft's approach attempts to balance innovation with appropriate safeguards, though the effectiveness of these measures will only become clear as the platform is adopted more widely. Microsoft's entry into scientific AI comes at a time when the field of accelerated discovery is heating up. The ability to compress research timelines could have profound implications for addressing urgent global challenges, from drug discovery to climate change solutions. What differentiates Microsoft's approach is its focus on accessibility for non-computational scientists and its integration with the company's existing cloud infrastructure and future quantum ambitions. By allowing domain experts to directly leverage advanced computing without intermediaries, Microsoft could potentially remove a significant bottleneck in scientific progress. 'The big efficiencies are coming from places where, instead of me cramming additional domain knowledge, in this case, a scientist having learned to code, we're basically saying, 'Actually, we'll let the genetic AI do that, you can do what you do, which is use your PhD and get forward progress,'' Zander explained. This democratization of advanced computational methods could lead to a fundamental shift in how scientific research is conducted globally. Smaller labs and institutions in regions with less computational infrastructure might suddenly gain access to capabilities previously available only to elite research institutions. However, the success of Microsoft Discovery will ultimately depend on how effectively it integrates into complex existing research workflows and whether its AI agents can truly understand the nuances of specialized scientific domains. The scientific community is notoriously rigorous and skeptical of new methodologies – Microsoft will need to demonstrate consistent, reproducible results to gain widespread adoption. The platform enters private preview today, with pricing details yet to be announced. Microsoft indicates that smaller research labs will be able to access the platform through Azure, with costs structured similarly to other cloud services. 'At the end of the day, our goal, from a business perspective, is that it's all about enabling that core platform, as opposed to you having to stand up,' Zander said. 'It'll just basically ride on top of the cloud and make it much easier for people to do.' As Microsoft builds out its ambitious scientific AI platform, it positions itself at a unique juncture in the history of both computing and scientific discovery. The scientific method – a process refined over centuries – is now being augmented by some of the most advanced artificial intelligence ever created. Microsoft Discovery represents a bet that the next era of scientific breakthroughs won't come from either brilliant human minds or powerful AI systems working in isolation, but from their collaboration – where AI handles the computational heavy lifting while human scientists provide the creativity, intuition, and critical thinking that machines still lack. 'If you think about chemistry, materials sciences, materials actually impact about 98% of the world,' Zander noted. 'Everything, the desks, the displays we're using, the clothing that we're wearing. It's all materials.' The implications of accelerating discovery in these domains extend far beyond Microsoft's business interests or even the tech industry. If successful, platforms like Microsoft Discovery could fundamentally alter the pace at which humanity can innovate in response to existential challenges – from climate change to pandemic prevention. The question now isn't whether AI will transform scientific research, but how quickly and how deeply. As Zander put it: 'We need to start working faster.' In a world facing increasingly complex challenges, Microsoft is betting that the combination of human scientific expertise and agentic AI might be exactly the acceleration we need.
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Lightmatter Welcomes Industry Leader Jason Zander to Its Board of Directors
Zander brings leadership and technical expertise to Lightmatter's board as the company accelerates the future of high-performance computing MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 25, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lightmatter, the leader in photonic supercomputing, today announced it appointed Jason Zander to its board of directors. Zander joins as Lightmatter strengthens its foothold in powering the next generation of computing systems to accelerate AI innovation. Zander brings decades of experience leading engineering and sales field organizations to his role on Lightmatter's board of directors. Throughout his career, he's played a pivotal role in incubating technical products and driving scientific discoveries that have transformed cloud computing. Zander currently leads Microsoft's Strategic Missions and Technologies division, where his team is focused on next-generation technology solutions, including engineering and research for advanced AI to accelerate scientific discovery and for cutting-edge quantum computing, solving problems previously impossible using classic compute. "Throughout my career, I've seen the impact of bold technological bets, and it's evident that Lightmatter's photonic technology is a transformative leap in data center AI innovation," said Zander. "I look forward to working with Nick and the talented Lightmatter team as they pioneer the next generation of computing infrastructure to power AI at scale." Lightmatter's patented technology is the key to building the biggest supercomputers – unlocking bandwidth, energy efficiency, and latency for data centers to scale. Zander joins Lightmatter at a critical time as the company prepares to showcase its latest innovations to Passage, the company's 3D Silicon Photonics Interconnect, from March 31st to April 3rd at the Optical Fiber Conference in San Francisco, California. "We're thrilled to welcome Jason Zander to our board of directors," said Lightmatter co-founder and CEO Nick Harris. "Jason's longstanding expertise in building AI data centers and next-generation technology solutions will be invaluable as we continue to scale and enable the next wave of AI innovators." About Lightmatter Lightmatter is leading a revolution in AI data center infrastructure, enabling the next giant leaps in human progress. The company's groundbreaking Passage™ platform—the world's first 3D-stacked silicon photonics engine—connects thousands to millions of processors at the speed of light. Designed to eliminate critical data bottlenecks, Lightmatter's technology enables unparalleled efficiency and scalability for the most advanced AI and high-performance computing workloads, pushing the boundaries of AI infrastructure. View source version on Contacts Media Contact: John O'Brienlightmatter@ Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Microsoft says it created a new state of matter to power the world's most advanced computers
LOS ANGELES - Microsoft says it has created a revolutionary computer chip that harnesses a new state of matter to pave the way for the most powerful quantum computers ever built. The company unveiled the Majorana 1 chip on Wednesday, calling it a major step toward scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computing. The chip, developed over nearly two decades, was detailed in the journal Nature and uses a topological superconductor—a material that is neither solid, liquid, nor gas—to build more reliable qubits, the building blocks of quantum computers. "All the computers in the world operating together today can't do what a single one-million-qubit quantum computer will be able to do," Microsoft said in a blog post. The backstory Unlike traditional quantum computers that require thousands of qubits to correct errors, Microsoft claims that its approach requires far fewer qubits due to lower error rates. The chip's foundation relies on a Majorana fermion, a subatomic particle first theorized in the 1930s that reduces the errors that typically plague quantum systems. "Whatever you're doing in the quantum space needs to have a path to a million qubits," Microsoft technical fellow Chetan Nayak said in a statement. "If it doesn't, you're going to hit a wall before you get to the scale at which you can solve the really important problems that motivate us." Most computers today use bits—tiny pieces of information that can be either 0 or 1—to process data. Every app, website, and game you use is built on this simple system of zeros and ones. Quantum computers, however, use qubits (short for quantum bits). Unlike regular bits, qubits can be both 0 and 1 at the same time—this is called superposition. Because of this, quantum computers can perform many calculations at once, making them exponentially more powerful than even the best supercomputers today. Think of it like this: If a normal computer is like flipping a single coin over and over to get heads or tails, a quantum computer is like spinning a whole bunch of coins at the same time—considering all possibilities at once before deciding on an answer. This power could help solve problems that are impossible for today's computers, like discovering new medicines, improving artificial intelligence, or creating unbreakable cybersecurity. Microsoft said Majorana 1 was fabricated using indium arsenide and aluminum, featuring a superconducting nanowire to observe Majorana particles. Unlike competing quantum chips, Majorana 1 can be controlled using standard computing equipment. While the chip currently contains fewer qubits than quantum processors from IBM and Google, Microsoft argues its design scales more efficiently. Big picture view Microsoft has not provided a specific timeline for when the chip will power fully functional quantum computers but said in a blog post that the moment is "years, not decades" away. Microsoft's Jason Zander, executive vice president overseeing long-term strategic projects, described Majorana 1 as a "high risk, high reward" innovation. "The hardest part has been solving the physics. There is no textbook for this, and we had to invent it," Zander said in an interview with Reuters. "We literally have invented the ability to go create this thing, atom by atom, layer by layer." What they're saying Philip Kim, a professor of physics at Harvard University who was not involved in the research, called the announcement an "exciting development" and said it places Microsoft at the forefront of quantum research. Kim also noted that Microsoft's hybrid approach, using both traditional semiconductors and exotic superconductors, could be an effective way to scale up quantum chips. "Although there's no demonstration [of large-scale scaling] yet, what they are doing is really successful," Kim told Reuters. The Source This report is based on Microsoft's official announcement, research published in Nature, and statements from Microsoft executives and independent experts interviewed by Reuters.
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Microsoft Unveils Quantum Computing Chip for Future Data Centers
(Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. announced its first quantum computing chip, a major step in the company's effort to produce devices that might someday solve problems beyond the reach of modern computers. Trump to Halt NY Congestion Pricing by Terminating Approval Sorry, Kids: Disney's New York Headquarters Is for Grown-Ups Airbnb Billionaire Offers Pre-Fab Homes for LA Fire Victims Child Migrant Watchdog Gutted in DOGE Cuts Chicago Council Delays $830 Million Bond Vote Amid Scrutiny The company says its Majorana 1 chip harnesses 8 qubits, the building blocks of quantum computing, on a sticky-note-sized piece of hardware it figures could eventually host 1 million of them. Right now, the chip is capable of little more than solving math problems that prove it can be controlled. But Microsoft engineers say it's far enough along to serve as the foundation for future quantum machines. Microsoft's announcement indicates that its engineers have found a way to deploy the particles that make quantum computing possible in a system that might one day power data centers and enable advances in fields like chemistry and health care. Some of the findings, outlining the operation of what the company calls a topoconductor, are being published Wednesday in the journal Nature. 'Scientists actually theorized this in 1937,' said Jason Zander, a Microsoft executive vice president charged with bringing quantum and other promising technologies to market. 'It's taken us nearly a hundred years to prove it. Now we can harness it.' He added that quantum machines will be doing useful things in 'years, not decades.' The field of quantum computing, whose imminent arrival has been predicted for about a decade, has seen a flurry of announcements in recent months indicating that the machines may be nearing practical utility. The technology marks a departure from the foundational structure of computers. Whether it's an iPhone or a supercomputer in a data center, all computers process information in units called bits, which are encoded as either a one or a zero. Quantum bits – or qubits – represent probabilities of a one or a zero, at times appearing as both. Owing to that pliability, strings of qubits can consider several possibilities at once, enabling them to find solutions to problems that befuddle traditional machines firmly tethered to ones and zeroes. Alphabet Inc.'s Google in December announced that its own new quantum chip took five minutes to reason through a problem that would take traditional computers longer to solve than the universe's age. The trouble – for Google, Microsoft and a host of startups plugging away at quantum machines — is the technology's error rate. Producing the particles that can be electronically controlled requires supercooled, quiet environments because stray heat or sound waves can introduce mistakes. In experiments, these particles blink in and out of existence in a fraction of a second. And correcting their errors can be as big a challenge as creating the particles. Microsoft, which started its quantum work in 2004, took a different approach than most by focusing its efforts on minimizing errors — specifically on Majorana, quasiparticles named for the Italian physicist who theorized them in the 1930s. Microsoft believes Majorana qubits will prove less prone to inadvertent flips between ones and zeros than qubits created by other approaches. To isolate and control Majorana, Microsoft cobbled together, atom-by-atom, strips of indium-arsenide, and joined aluminum nanowires together in an H shape. When cooled to near absolute zero and precisely tuned with a magnetic field, Majorana are induced at each of the letter's four ends, making a single qubit. It gives off signals — the ones and zeroes — that engineers can read with microwaves. That structure can be repeated across a chip. There were some false starts: Microsoft researchers thought they'd identified the particles in 2018, but later retracted the paper that sought to prove it. Eventually they cracked the problem and managed to create and measure Majorana a few years later. Japan Perfected 7-Eleven. Why Can't the US Get It Right? How Med Spas Conquered America Before DeepSeek Blew Up, Chatbot Arena Announced Its Arrival The Startup That Stepped In When the Baby Formula Supply Chain Broke Elon Musk's DOGE Is a Force Americans Can't Afford to Ignore ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Sign in to access your portfolio
South China Morning Post
20-02-2025
- Science
- South China Morning Post
Microsoft unveils first quantum chip that uses Majorana particles instead of electrons
Microsoft on Wednesday announced its first quantum computing chip, a major step in the company's effort to produce devices that might someday solve problems beyond the reach of modern computers. Advertisement The company said its Majorana 1 chip harnessed 8 qubits, the building blocks of quantum computing, on a sticky-note-sized piece of hardware it figured could eventually host 1 million of them. Right now, the chip is capable of little more than solving maths problems that prove it can be controlled, but Microsoft engineers said it was far enough along to serve as the foundation for future quantum machines. Microsoft's announcement indicates that its engineers have found a way to deploy the particles that make quantum computing possible in a system that might one day power data centres and enable advances in fields like chemistry and healthcare. Some of the findings, outlining the operation of what the company called a topoconductor, were published Wednesday in the journal Nature. 'Scientists actually theorised this in 1937,' said Jason Zander, a Microsoft executive vice-president charged with bringing quantum and other promising technologies to market. 'It's taken us nearly a hundred years to prove it. Now we can harness it.' He added that quantum machines will be doing useful things in 'years, not decades'. The Majorana 1 is Microsoft's first quantum processor. Photo: Reuters The field of quantum computing, whose imminent arrival has been predicted for about a decade, has seen a flurry of announcements in recent months indicating that the machines may be nearing practical utility.
