Pasqal and ARAMCO to Develop QC Apps Targeting Energy Industry

By Carolyn Mathas

Pasqal and ARAMCO just penned a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to collaboratively develop quantum computing use cases specific to the energy sector. Under the agreement, Pasqal will provide its experience and neutral-atom approach that delivers 100+ qubit scalability and its platform’s flexibility that includes changing the geometry of a quantum register at each run to adapt to a specific challenge. Pasqal’s proprietary algorithms including Quantum Evolution Kernel (QEK) and others will be used for a variety of applications throughout the endeavor. The initial focus will be on creating quantum machine learning (QML) models.

ARAMCO’s plan is to pioneer quantum computing in the oil and gas industry, addressing such upstream, midstream and downstream challenges as network optimization and management, reaction network generation and refinery linear programming. Pasqal will establish operations in the Middle East and grow its business in Saudi Arabia and across the region.

Together, the companies will also explore applications for quantum computing and artificial intelligence that accelerates the development of quantum-based machine learning models and advance additional use cases across the Saudi ARAMCO value chain. They also plan to investigate augmenting ARAMCO’s existing training programs with Pasqal’s quantum technologies. For more information, access the press release on Pasqal’s website here.

March 9, 2022