Microsoft Excel Could Be the Portal to Quantum Computing in Finance According to Multiverse Principals

(VentureBeat) Multiverse, the San Sebastián, Spain-based quantum software startup is dedicated to forging forward with finance applications of the quantum kind, and its leadership sees the Excel spreadsheet as a logical means to begin to make this happen.
“In finance, everybody uses Excel; even Bloomberg has connections for Excel tools,” said Enrique Lizaso Olmos, CEO of Multiverse Computing, which recently gained $11.5 million in a funding round headed by JME Ventures.
Excel is a key entry point for emerging quantum methods, Lizaso Olmos said, as he described how users can drag and drop data sets from Excel columns and rows into Multiverse’s Singularity SDK, which then launches quantum computing jobs on available hardware.
From their desks, for example, Excel-oriented quants can analyze portfolio positions of growing complexity. The Singularity SDK can assign their calculations to the best quantum structure, whether it’s based on ion traps, superconducting circuits, tensor networks, or something else. Jobs can run on dedicated classical high-performance computers as well.
The push to find ways to immediately start work in quantum applications is a differentiator for Multiverse, claims Lizaso. The focus is to work with available quantum devices that can solve today’s problems in the financial sector.
It’s not surprising, then, that Multiverse worked with both BBVA (Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria) to showcase both quantum computing in finance and Singularity’s potential to optimize investment portfolio management, as well as Crédit Agricole CIB to implement algorithms for risk management.