Sergio Gago, CTO of Cloudera and former Head of AI & Quantum at Moody’s, is interviewed by Yuval Boger. They discuss a practical, problem-first path to quantum in finance. Sergio contrasts annealers and gate-based systems, emphasizes hybrid workflows for portfolio optimization and Monte Carlo risk, and explores fraud detection and knowledge-graph use cases. Sergio stresses rigorous benchmarking against top-end GPUs/FPGAs, explainability for regulators, and total cost of ownership over lab metrics. They also touch on post-quantum cryptography (offense vs. defense), realistic definitions of “quantum advantage,” and why disciplined pilots—and candid vendor comparisons—matter more than hype, and much more.

Listen to the conversation or view the transcript here