Credit Agricole and Pasqal put a date on it: quantum in production banking by 2028

[Dank15]

Credit Agricole CIB and Pasqal signed a strategic partnership this week to industrialise quantum computing in capital markets, with initial production use cases targeted as early as 2028. This is not a fresh flirtation, they have been collaborating since 2019 and ran projects on counterparty credit risk and portfolio optimisation that the bank says showed quantum algorithms beating classical approaches under certain conditions

The roadmap has three tracks, quantum inspired algorithms on existing classical infrastructure for immediate gains, operational testing on Pasqal's neutral atom machines under production conditions, and eventually hybrid classical quantum deployment for problems beyond today's systems. The bank is even reorganising staff into dedicated quantum business teams, coordinators and deployment managers

The phrase doing the heavy lifting is under certain conditions. Every quantum finance result so far has been a carefully chosen problem instance where the comparison favours the quantum or quantum inspired method, and quantum inspired usually means a classical algorithm that quantum research happened to motivate. That first roadmap track requires no quantum hardware at all

Still, a major bank restructuring teams and naming a production year is different from the usual innovation lab theatre. The next phase targets monitoring capital reserve consumption against risk weighted assets, which is about as unsexy and real as banking gets. Is 2028 brave or delusional?

Crédit Agricole and Pasqal expand strategic quantum partnershipwww.eenewseurope.com

[HitmanMatt53]

Delusional for anything needing fault tolerance, brave and plausible for optimisation heuristics where you just need better answers, not provably optimal ones

[HenryThierry]

The quantum inspired track is the tell. They can declare victory in 2028 with classical algorithms and a quantum logo on the slide

[ParallelSelf34]

Bit cynical. Banks do not restructure reporting lines for logo projects, headcount reorganisation means budget owners are committed

[Rapid Crossing]

Work in quant risk at a competitor and can confirm everyone is watching this deal. If CA CIB shaves basis points off capital consumption, every treasury desk follows within a year

[ScarletWrench]

Neutral atoms for finance optimisation is a decent fit. Analog mode QUBO style problems map naturally onto atom arrays

[Undertaker_EU]

The 2019 start date matters. Seven years of joint work before naming a production date is the opposite of hype cycle behaviour

[TristanFenwick]

Meanwhile Pasqal is also SPACing onto Nasdaq at a 2 billion valuation. A flagship bank deal with a date lands awfully conveniently, no?

[Ava_75]

Every partnership announcement in every industry lands conveniently. The question is whether the technical claims hold and nobody outside the bank can audit them

[Kieron93]

That is my actual problem, none of these finance results are published in a form anyone can reproduce. Commercial secrecy and scientific credibility are pulling in opposite directions