(Sifted.eu) Banks can already get a 100-fold advantage by using quantum computers to solve problems such as portfolio optimisation and fraud detection fraud, says Spanish startup Multiverse Computing. Forget what Goldman Sachs said about useful quantum computing being five years away in finance.
The company, which raised a €10m seed funding round, has developed a quantum software product that it is supplying to customers including BBVA, Bankia the European Tax Agency and the Bank of Canada by focusing on problems that are particularly well suited to quantum computers, Multiverse says it is possible to get quantum advantage even with today’s small, error-prone machines.
The San Sebastian-headquartered company matches the algorithm, on the back end, to a particular type of quantum computer that is best suited for that problem. For example D-Wave’s machines are good for optimisation problems while IBM and IonQ’s quantum computers perform better on machine learning, says Lizaso.
Other types of problems can still be tricky to solve with quantum computing, such as working out pricing for complex financial instruments (which relies on running so-called Monte Carlo simulations that QC Ware and Goldman Sachs were looking at) or for large-scale simulations. For these, we are likely to need quantum machines with larger numbers of qubits.
“You have to grow like hell at the moment,” says Lizaso, noting that many of Multiverse’s competitors are large tech incumbents like IBM and Google, and that quantum software rival Cambridge Quantum Computing recently merged with Honeywell to give itself more firepower.
Multiverse’s seed round was led by JME Ventures and also included Quantonation, EASO Ventures, Inveready, Mondragón Fondo de Promoción, Ikerlan, LKS, and Penja Strategy.
Quantum Algorithms that Speed Up Banking Operations 100X Are Here
