Station Q, where this research occurs, tries to do the basic research to build a topological quantum computer, which if it turns out to be physically possible (which is as far as I know neither proved nor disproved) is considered by many people as a much more scalable approach to build quantum computers than existing ones. The reason (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Topological_quant...) is "The advantage of a quantum computer based on quantum braids over using trapped quantum particles is that the former is much more stable. The smallest perturbations can cause a quantum particle to decohere and introduce errors in the computation, but such small perturbations do not change the braids' topological properties."

Microsoft hopes to be the starters of a similar revolution for quantum computers as there was for "binary" computers.

Though ianai's reason of tax writeoff is probably also a part of the story. :-)