250+ Early Quantum Applications

In this talk we present a short overview of recent quantum applications in VW. Using the Quantum Shuttle project as motivation, we show how to construct live quantum optimization services for production applications. Specifically, we showcase a new application—the multi-car paint shop problem—and provide a live demo of this optimization system with real-world data.

Peptides are mid-size molecules composed of amino acids and constitute some of nature's best drugs. Designing these mid-size molecules computationally remains a challenge due to the astronomical search space and complex energy dynamics. Here, we explore how quantum annealing and hybrid approaches may offer a new alternative toolkit for designing peptide therapeutics that could hold the key to groundbreaking new drugs.

In this paper, the authors show how to implement in a simple way some complex real-life constraints on the portfolio optimization problem, so that it becomes amenable to quantum optimization algorithms. Specifically, first we explain how to obtain the best investment portfolio with a given target risk. This is important in order to produce portfolios with different risk profiles, as typically offered by financial institutions. Second, we show how to implement individual investment bands, i.e., minimum and maximum possible investments for each asset. This is also important in order to impose diversification and avoid corner solutions. Quite remarkably, we show how to build the constrained cost function as a quadratic binary optimization (QUBO) problem, this being the natural input of quantum annealers. The validity of our implementation is proven by finding the optimal portfolios, using D-Wave Hybrid and its Advantage quantum processor, on portfolios built with all the assets from S&P100 and S&P500.