qBraid, MITRE, and JonesTrading Partner with Connected DMV on Quantum Forecasting System
New Global Industry Challenge Use Case Explores Quantum Reservoir Computing for Complex Time-Series Prediction
Connected DMV, the operator of Quantum World Congress, today announced that qBraid, MITRE, and JonesTrading will sponsor a new forecasting-focused use case in the 2026 Global Industry Challenge (GIC), inviting teams from around the world to explore how quantum reservoir computing can improve the prediction of complex, chaotic time-series systems.
The challenge will focus on Quantum Reservoir Computing (QRC), an emerging quantum machine learning approach designed to process temporal data using noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) systems without requiring gradient-based training of quantum circuits.
Hosted by Connected DMV, the Global Industry Challenge brings together researchers, developers, startups, and industry leaders to collaborate on solving real-world industry problems using quantum computing and adjacent technologies such as artificial intelligence.
“Time-series prediction lies at the heart of many industries—from financial markets to weather systems,” said George Thomas, President & CEO of Connected DMV. “This challenge provides a platform for innovators worldwide to explore how emerging quantum machine learning approaches may expand the tools available for understanding and forecasting complex dynamic systems.”
Forecasting Complex Systems
Many of the world’s most consequential analytical problems involve predicting systems that evolve over time.
Financial markets, climate systems, and infrastructure networks all exhibit nonlinear dynamics, chaotic behavior, and regime shifts that make long-term forecasting extremely difficult.
Traditional machine learning approaches can model many aspects of these systems, but they often struggle when temporal dependencies become highly nonlinear or when signals are embedded in large volumes of noisy data.
Quantum Reservoir Computing offers a potentially promising alternative approach. By leveraging the natural dynamics of quantum systems as computational reservoirs, QRC models can encode and process temporal information in ways that may capture complex system behavior more efficiently than classical architectures.
The Technical Challenge
Participants in the Quantum Reservoir Computing Global Industry Challenge will design and benchmark QRC systems capable of forecasting complex temporal data.
Teams will explore approaches that:
Implement quantum reservoir architectures suitable for NISQ-era hardware
Benchmark forecasting performance across varying qubit counts and realistic noise models
Evaluate the expressivity of quantum reservoirs for nonlinear temporal systems
Compare quantum models against classical machine learning baselines
Use cases will include forecasting scenarios drawn from financial markets and climate systems, where chaotic dynamics and regime shifts create major analytical challenges.
To ensure meaningful comparisons, participants will implement a common benchmark framework designed to test whether the quantum reservoir exhibits sufficient expressive capacity to capture complex temporal patterns.
Finalist teams will run experiments across quantum systems and simulation environments available through qBraid, including hardware architectures from IBM, D-Wave, QCi, IonQ, QuEra, Rigetti, IQM, as well as GPU-accelerated quantum simulation platforms.
A Global Proving Ground for Applied Quantum Innovation
The Global Industry Challenge has rapidly emerged as one of the most ambitious international programs focused on applying quantum technologies to real-world industry problems.
The inaugural 2025 program attracted more than 600 innovators from over 60 countries, culminating in live winner announcements on the main stage at Quantum World Congress 2025.
Participants included researchers, startups, industry professionals, and students collaborating across six continents to develop solutions for industry challenges sponsored by organizations including The World Bank Group, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and MITRE.
By connecting real industry problems with a global community of innovators, the program accelerates both practical quantum applications and the development of the next generation of quantum talent.
Looking Ahead
The 2026 Global Industry Challenge will include multiple industry tracks spanning energy infrastructure, advanced materials, and dynamic systems forecasting, each defined by a leading industry or government partner.
Participants will form global teams, develop technical proposals, and execute their solutions across a three-phase program running from March through July 2026, with winners announced live at Quantum World Congress 2026 in College Park, Maryland.
Hosted virtually and open to participants worldwide, the program continues to expand the global quantum ecosystem while pushing the boundaries of what emerging computing technologies can achieve in real-world applications.
Innovators interested in participating can learn more and register through the Global Industry Challenge platform.