Goldman, JPMorgan Take Divergent Paths in Quantum Computing Race

Roughly three years ago, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. looked like it had an edge in Wall Street’s race to master quantum computing.

The banking giant had assembled a handful of highly specialized scientists and partnered with Amazon.com to figure out how the nascent technology could be used to juice better returns for its raft of wealthy clients. They were shocked by what they found.

Goldman’s researchers discovered they would have to run an algorithm for millions of years in order to solve the problem. What’s more, the processor would need to have at least 8 million so-called logical qubits — a set of quantum ...