Marcopi Store is the head of JP Morgan’s applied research and engineering for global technology.
Source: JP Morgan
IONQ hired former head of JPMorgan Chase’s Applied Research to help Quantum Firm’s corporate clients adopt the next generation of hardware, algorithms and security.
Marco Pistoia, who headed JPMorgan’s internal research group from 2020 to this year, will be joining IONQ as a senior vice president of industry relations, with the quantum computing company scheduled to be announced on Monday.
JPMorgan, the largest US bank by assets, recently reviewed the leadership of research groups that worked on quantum computing and other advanced technologies. Quantum computing has the potential to be a major advance over traditional computing, with high-tech giants and small public companies competing to commercialize it.
IONQ is one of the bigger examples of pure play quantum companies. Companies and competitors, including Rigetti Computing and D-Wave, have been fueled by excitement in the new field, with stocks rising sharply over the past year.
In his new role, Pistoia will report directly to IonQ CEO Niccolo de Masi, focusing on helping companies adopt both quantum computing and quantum safe cryptography in an interview last week.
“Big risk”
A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could theoretically destroy the encryption methods that keep global financial data secure.
“The huge risks that Quantum poses to encryption, so the whole world is needed to move to quantum-secured cryptography,” Pistoia said.
A bad actor “can take any public key and reverse engineer the corresponding private key,” he said.
According to Pistoia, the emergence of commercially usable quantum computers is rapidly approaching.
“I think that easy-to-use quantum computers are much closer now. We’re talking about two or three years from now,” he said.
Pisto said it would like to continue working with Quantum Projects and other financial companies with JPMorgan.
JPMorgan declined to comment on the issue.
