NEW YORK -- Microsoft said on Wednesday that it has created a new state of matter in its quest to make a powerful machine, called a quantum computer, that could accelerate the development of everything from batteries to medicines to artificial intelligence.

Microsoft's scientists said they had built what is known as a "topological qubit" based on this new phase of physical existence, which could be harnessed to solve mathematical, scientific and technological problems.

"With the development, Microsoft is raising the stakes in what is set to be the next big technological contest, beyond today's race over artificial intelligence," reported The New York Times. Scientists have chased the dream of a quantum computer, a machine that could exploit the strange and exceedingly powerful behavior of subatomic particles or very cold objects, since the 1980s.

The push heated up in December when Google unveiled an experimental quantum computer that needed just five minutes to complete a calculation that most supercomputers could not finish in 10 septillion years - longer than the age of the known universe, according to the report.

"Microsoft's quantum technology could leapfrog the methods under development at Google," it added. As part of its research, the company built multiple topological qubits inside a new kind of computer chip that combines the strengths of the semiconductors that power classical computers with the superconductors that are typically used to build a quantum computer.