New developer tools increase the versatility of the Microsoft Quantum platform

The field of quantum computing has advanced beyond the level of error-prone physical qubits to an era of reliable quantum computation with logical qubits. To continue making progress toward fault-tolerant quantum machines, advances in both quantum hardware and software are required. Microsoft is committed to providing the tools that developers and scientists need to enable applications on the quantum machines that exist today, as well as the fault-tolerant machines of the future.

The Microsoft Quantum Development Kit (QDK) is an open-source developer toolkit for building quantum applications. It provides everything needed-from simulators to a modern programming experience-for developers to build and execute quantum code, both locally and on quantum hardware. The QDK is integrated with VS Code and GitHub Copilot to help you write, test, and execute quantum code. Microsoft's QDK installs and runs on laptops, and GitHub Copilot makes it quick and easy to get started.

Domain libraries and workflows available with Microsoft's QDK include those for error correction and chemistry, with other applications on the horizon. The included tools reduce the effort and expertise needed for researchers to design, test, and implement quantum chemistry applications or the error correction codes needed to create logical qubits. Both these tools and the QDK are open source and interoperable with the most popular quantum programming languages and frameworks, including Q#, OpenQASM, Qiskit, and Cirq. The quantum chemistry toolkit supports WSL and Docker support for reproducibility and portability across systems.

AI-enabled quantum programming

Microsoft's QDK is fully integrated with VS Code and GitHub Copilot. After installing the QDK extension from the VS Code Marketplace, GitHub Copilot simplifies the use of QDK features in VS Code, including Python and Jupyter integration, circuit rendering, IntelliSense, breakpoint debugging, local simulators, visualizations, histograms, hardware submission, and resource estimation. With GitHub Copilot and the QDK, programming tasks such as code generation, unit tests, and job submissions are faster and easier than ever before.

QDK for scientific applications

For today's quantum computers to help solve complex scientific problems, those problems must first be simplified and optimized to fit within hardware constraints. Microsoft's QDK for chemistry provides the advanced tools that developers and quantum researchers need to transform complex challenges into problems that today's quantum computers can tackle efficiently. This toolkit is designed by chemists to make quantum development for chemistry applications more accessible.

We are very excited about the launch of Microsoft's QDK for chemistry. We believe the modular design of the platform will be a true game changer for quantum chemistry, enabling scalability, flexibility, and widespread adoption across the community.

At Algorithmiq, our long-standing experience in building a computational chemistry platform allows us to fully appreciate the level of sophistication that Microsoft's QDK brings to integrating complex tools and workflows, like ours.

We've been delighted to have played a small part in shaping this launch and look forward to seeing the impact it will have on the field.

Turning complex quantum chemistry problems into actionable results requires more than advanced quantum algorithms. It requires the seamless integration of classical data preparation, circuit optimization, and post processing of quantum data. Microsoft's QDK for chemistry delivers a holistic, end-to-end solution for quantum chemistry, combining best-in-class classical chemistry methods with state-of-the-art algorithms designed for near-term quantum hardware. Efficient classical preprocessing methods reduce problem size while preserving essential chemical accuracy, and chemistry-aware quantum algorithms dramatically reduce circuit depth-shrinking gate counts from thousands to single digits for certain problems.

We aim to empower quantum development, with the tools and environments researchers already use-such as VS Code and Python-enhanced with built-in visualization, circuit introspection, and AI-assisted coding capabilities.

QDK for chemistry provides a unified, intuitive interface for molecular modeling and electronic structure preparation, supporting a broad range of quantum chemistry methods and software packages. Automated workflows with built-in pipelines for Hamiltonian generation and active space selection help researchers move efficiently from problem definition to quantum execution.

Native VS Code extensions enable real-time molecular and circuit visualization, making it easier to iterate, debug, and refine quantum applications. With support for visualizing molecules and molecular orbitals, rendering quantum circuits with deep-circuit compression, and running workloads on both QDK simulators and quantum hardware, the QDK for chemistry streamlines the entire quantum chemistry development workflow-from classical preparation to quantum simulation, execution, and postprocessing.

To ensure continued alignment with rapidly evolving quantum algorithms, Microsoft's QDK for chemistry is built with adaptability and extensibility in mind. It features plug-and-play integration that supports simulations with any chemistry code, quantum language, or algorithmic package, minimizing configuration overhead. As a result, it will continue to make challenging problems tractable and accelerate time to insight as it scales seamlessly toward the next generation of quantum computing.

QDK for error correction

Microsoft has a longstanding heritage of building tools to further our own quantum error correction research and development. QDK for error correction makes these tools available for the broader quantum community. The tools needed for typical quantum error correction research and development workflows will now be included in Microsoft's QDK. These include open-source modules for characterizing, validating, and debugging encoded quantum programs, customizable encoding and decoding strategies that align with target runtimes, and customizable notebook samples for common use cases. Tooling packages will be released over time with full availability expected later in 2026.

The QDK is part of our highly adaptable platform

The QDK is included as part of the Microsoft Quantum platform, which brings together quantum hardware, software, AI, and high-performance computing to create an end-to-end solution powered by Azure. By correcting the errors in high-quality physical qubits, our platform enables the reliable computation needed to realize groundbreaking use cases of quantum computing. Now, with new tools provided through Microsoft's QDK and supported by GitHub Copilot, the platform enables quantum development, chemistry, and error correction, making it even more versatile.

The Microsoft Quantum platform combines our advanced qubit-virtualization system with quantum processing units (QPUs) from industry-leading hardware providers to create logical qubits. It includes an innovative quantum operating system to help customers manage, control, and monitor the quantum device while integrating with Azure. The platform also includes a quantum engine that orchestrates quantum hardware and error correction.

The Microsoft Quantum platform is being designed to be highly versatile and integrable with multiple types of quantum hardware. By applying our platform to Atom Computing 's neutral-atom qubits, we are co-designing Magne, the world's most powerful quantum computer. Defining features of Magne will be revealed by QuNorth, a Nordic quantum initiative, at the Discover Magne event on January 26, 2026 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Microsoft will help provide the necessary skilling to ensure that Nordic developers can unlock the full potential of Magne once deployed. This training is being developed in partnership with qBraid and a cohort of academic and industry partners across the Nordics. The training materials, which are tailored to application engineers and error correction researchers, will help grow regional expertise in reliable quantum computing, and position the Nordic quantum ecosystem to set new benchmarks for innovation.

Get started with Microsoft's QDK today