Quantum Portfolio Optimization Challenge Recap
Last weekend, QCentroid participated in the ETH Quantum Hackathon 2025, an exciting gathering of bright young minds from around the world, all coming together to push the boundaries of what’s possible with quantum technology. As proud sponsors of one of the official hackathon challenges — the Quantum Portfolio Optimization challenge — we witnessed firsthand the creativity, energy, and technical talent of the next generation of quantum developers.
Hosted at ETH Zurich and organized by the Quantum Engineering Commission, with the support of AMIV and VSETH, the ETH Quantum Hackathon is one of the leading events in the global quantum community. The 2025 edition brought together students, researchers, and early-career professionals for three days of hands-on building, experimentation, and innovation, with participants tackling real-world quantum problems across various industries.
The QCentroid Challenge: Quantum Portfolio Optimization
Key Insights from the Quantum Portfolio Optimization Challenge
Our challenge track, we asked participants to design and implement a quantum routine inside a portfolio optimization algorithm based on real-world datasets. The goal was to allocate investments across a set of assets, using the unique computational power of quantum devices to explore the solution space more efficiently than classical methods can. They could select where to put the quantum routine (asset selection, expected return guess, asset allocation, etc) and, using classical parts of well known algorithms, improve the behaviour of one or more steps of those algorithms using classical parts of well-known algorithms.
Portfolio optimization is a natural use case for quantum computing, as it involves solving complex optimization problems that quickly become intractable as the number of variables grows. We challenged participants to go beyond basic implementations and think creatively about how quantum mechanics could be leveraged to find optimal investment strategies.
To support the teams, QCentroid provided guidance, mentorship, and access to documentation and resources. Participants used their development environments along with different simulators, ensuring accessibility and flexibility across various teams.
Five teams took on the QCentroid challenge, each bringing their unique approach. The diversity of ideas and strategies showcased the richness of quantum algorithm design, reminding us of how early we still are in this field and how much potential lies ahead.
The winning team stood out with a particularly elegant approach to the problem. Using creativity, they transformed the problem into a well-known problem and solved it with a modified fundamental algorithm. They added some real-world constraints not to increase difficulty but to ease the solution.
Other teams solved the problem with approaches from graph theory to variational solutions with impressive theoretical results, aiming to explore how they could perform in the real world.
This kind of insight and originality is exactly what we hoped to see when designing the challenge. It confirmed that quantum-native thinking — building algorithms that align with how quantum systems behave — can offer new avenues for solving longstanding problems in finance and beyond.
Why Quantum Hackathons Matter for the Future of Quantum Computing
Beyond the technical solutions, what impressed us most was the participants’ passion, energy, and collaborative spirit. Teams navigated quantum concepts, implemented algorithms, tested code, and presented thoughtful final solutions. It was a reminder that the future of quantum computing is not just about hardware or software — it’s about people. And the future is bright.
Being part of this event reaffirmed QCentroid’s mission to make quantum and advanced computing accessible and useful for enterprises of all sizes. Through our QuantumOps platform, we aim to reduce the barriers to entry, helping organizations explore, integrate, and scale quantum solutions in a way that aligns with their business goals.
Events like the ETH Quantum Hackathon show we’re not alone in this mission. The momentum is building, and a new wave of quantum developers is emerging — one that is diverse, interdisciplinary, and deeply motivated to use this powerful technology for good.
Looking Ahead
We sincerely thank ETH Zurich, the organizers — Quantum Engineering Commission, AMIV, and VSETH —, professors, other sponsors, and, of course, the amazing participants who joined our challenge track. We’re excited to keep supporting initiatives like this and building bridges between academia, industry, and the quantum community.
If you’re curious to learn more about the Quantum Portfolio Optimization challenge or want to dive into some of the winning solutions, you can visit the official hackathon page here:
ETH Quantum Hackathon 2025
Let’s keep pushing boundaries, exploring new ideas, and making the quantum future a shared reality.