Goldman Sachs' head of quantum research has left the room

Nikitas Stamatopoulos is no longer at Goldman Sachs. Having joined the firm from JPMorgan in 2020 as a vice president in quantum computing R&D and then been promoted to head of quantum computing research in June 2023, Stamatopoulos has now left again.

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He's joining Phasecraft, a London-based company focused on quantum algorithms, and will be based in Washington DC.

His exit comes as banks invest more heavily in quantum computing, both for data analysis and cryptography. JPMorgan in particular is hiring heavily for its quantum recruiting team under Marco Pistoia, a friendly MD whose wife once slept with her head on his desk. The bank is offering salaries of up to $325k for executive director level hires. 

However, it seems that banks aren't always the preferred destinations for quantum computing experts. Goldman's previous head of advanced computing R&D, who was hired from Stanford University in 2020 left in 2023 to become a partner at Quantonation, a VC firm investing in technologies related to quantum computing.  

Stamatopoulos has a PhD in cosmology from Dartmouth College. Phasecraft was founded in 2019 by John Morton and Ashley Montaro, academics at the British universities of UCL and Bristol respectively. Recruits typically have an academic background.

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