Moody’s launches quantum-as-a-service platform for finance

According to the Moody’s Analytics website, QFStudio is a software-as-a-service offering that will serve as “a continuous integration, benchmark, and delivery platform” for quantum computing solutions.

Quantum computing for finance

The burgeoning quantum computing sector is expected to experience steady growth over the next few decades. A recent forecast predicted that quantum computing technologies would grow from a market capitalization in the U.S. of about $138 million in 2022 to $1.2 billion by 2030.

Currently, most of the focus in quantum computing is on research and development. Companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Google, D-Wave, and Rigetti have quantum, cloud-based quantum, and hybrid quantum computing offerings on the market but most of these solutions are geared towards early-movers exploring use cases.

Related: IBM says it will have hit a quantum computing ‘inflection point’ by 2029

In the finance sector, companies such as Multiverse Computing are exploring a feature called “quantum advantage,” or the idea that there are problems that can be solved by a quantum system that can’t feasibly be solved by binary computers.

QFStudio looks to bridge the gap for early movers in the finance sector through a SaaS product that allows clients to compare classical algorithm performance with quantum algorithm performance in order to select the best option for their specific problem. Clients will be able to connect to the service via a web-based interface or API.

Quantum without the overhead

One of the current limitations of quantum computing is the outsized costs to engineer and maintain quantum computers. The most advanced systems, such as the gate-based quantum processors housed in numerous universities and big tech laboratories, are typically only accessible via cloud computing due to their size and infrastructure requirements.

In this way, researchers and enterprise clients can gain access to quantum algorithms and quantum computing models without having to actually take on the costs of maintaining the hardware.

Beyond the binary

Cointelegraph contacted Multiverse Computing Chief Sales Officer Victor Gaspar to find out what kind of hardware QFStudio integrated with. In an email response, Gaspar told us that the algorithms were run on AWS GPUs and quantum annealing systems.

This indicates a state-of-the-art approach for client-facing quantum SaaS applications. He also mentioned that the company planned to eventually expand into running algorithms on gate-based processors, a type of quantum system that lies at the cutting edge of current research.

Ultimately, the big idea for quantum computing in the finance sector is to use quantum algorithms to transcend the limitations of binary compute. There are myriad problems related to finance — such as accurately forecasting market movements — that traditional binary computers either can’t solve or could take too long to solve. Many of these, theoretically, could be trivial for a quantum system of sufficient capability.