Rigetti Computing announced that it has signed a collaboration agreement with ADIA Lab to design, build, execute, and optimize a quantum computing solution intended to address the probability distribution classification problem. This is one of the greatest challenges of quantitative finance with many direct applications to practical use cases in the investment industry.
The collaboration aims to make use of today’s quantum computing devices for solving real-world problems, with the ambitious objective of reducing the gap to the target of narrow quantum advantage. This is the point at which a quantum computer is able to solve a practical, operationally relevant problem significantly better, faster, or cheaper than a current classical solution.
Subodh Kulkarni, CEO of Rigetti, said in a statement: “We believe that in order to reach narrow quantum advantage, we need to work on real-world, well-defined and hard computational problems. Working with ADIA Lab’s researchers, we will be able to leverage their expertise, datasets, and use cases towards building a quantum solution that we hope will outperform current classical solutions.”
“We believe the finance sector is in a strong position to benefit from quantum computing due to the many complex use cases that span financial organizations, and the potential shorter path to adoption. Quantum algorithms applied to existing financial models could be integrated into production-type environments in weeks, while rolling out a new material or drug discovered using a quantum computer could take years.”
Horst Simon, director of ADIA Lab, said in a statement: “The impact of quantum computing on quantitative finance has become a central research problem that will define the future of the industry. Partnering with Rigetti allows us to advance our research in this important area with access to leading quantum computing technology and experts. We look forward to embarking on this collaborative research project and discovering more powerful ways to address a key challenge in the quantitative finance sector.”
ADIA Lab will define finance-related use cases and provide Rigetti with classical datasets, with a focus on time series. Rigetti will investigate methods of encoding the classical datasets into corresponding quantum states using parameterized quantum circuits. Fidelity metrics will be developed with the aim to compare two quantum states and determine their similarity. Results will be benchmarked against classical algorithms used to compare distributions. Rigetti will build and test the quantum solutions using its Quantum Cloud Services (QCS) platform.