Standard Chartered Bank announced on Monday it and Universities Space Research Association (USRA) have signed a Collaborative Research Agreement to partner on quantum computing research and developing quantum computing applications. Standard Chartered reported that its team, led by Dr. Alexei Kondratyev, Global Head of Data Science and Innovation, and USRA have collaborated in quantum computing research since 2017.
“An earlier success in investigating the quantum annealing approach to computational problems in portfolio optimisation use cases led to this strategic partnership, where USRA will continue to support fundamental academic research in quantum physics and artificial intelligence and Standard Chartered will focus on future commercial applications.”
While sharing more details about the partnership, Alex Manson, Global Head of SC Ventures, which is Standard Chartered’s Innovation, Fintech Investment, and Ventures Arm, stated:
“The world is currently in the process of identifying commercial use cases where quantum computer capabilities will surpass classical computers. We have a conviction that some of these use cases will transform the way we manage risks in financial services, for example by simulating portfolios and exponentially speeding up the generation of market data. We will work with USRA to identify such use cases in financial services, with a view to implementing them within our bank, as well as potentially offering this service to other market participants over time.”
Standard Chartered added that through the collaboration, it and USRA intend to develop this initial collaboration beyond quantum annealing to all unconventional computing systems that could provide an advantage to applications of interest, such as gate-model noisy-intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) processors and Coherent Ising machines.