IonQ Speeds Quantum-Accelerated Drug Development Application With AstraZeneca, AWS, and NVIDIA

June 09, 2025 at 07:05 AM EDT

Largest demonstration of its kind combines leading hardware, platforms, and techniques to achieve 20 times speedup over previous demonstrations

Ecosystem collaboration marks significant step toward designing more efficient ways of producing pharmaceuticals

IonQ will showcase demonstration at ISC High Performance conference in Hamburg, Germany

IonQ (NYSE: IONQ), a leading commercial quantum computing and networking company, announced results of a collaborative research program between IonQ, AstraZeneca, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and NVIDIA to develop and demonstrate a quantum-accelerated computational chemistry workflow which has the potential to power world-changing innovation in healthcare, life sciences, chemistry, and more.

The results of the collaboration will be showcased at the ISC High Performance conference, which takes place on June 10-13, 2025, in Hamburg, Germany.

The IonQ-designed workflow provides an end-to-end example of a hybrid quantum-classical workflow that helps provide solutions to complex pharmaceutical development challenges, and has the potential to improve speed and efficiency within the drug development process. Developing new drugs can take ten or more years and cost billions of dollars, so advancements that streamline early-stage research and reduce computational bottlenecks can unlock significant strategic and commercial value.

This demonstration focused on a critical step in a Suzuki-Miyaura reaction – a class of chemical transformations used for the synthesis of small molecule drugs. By integrating IonQ’s Forte quantum processing unit (QPU) with the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform through Amazon Braket and AWS ParallelCluster services, the team achieved more than 20 times improvement in end-to-end time-to-solution compared to previous implementations. The technique maintained accuracy while reducing the overall expected runtime from months to days.

“This demonstration with AstraZeneca represents a meaningful step toward practical quantum computing applications in chemistry and materials science and showcases how IonQ’s enterprise-grade quantum computers are uniquely suited to meet the challenge,” said Niccolo de Masi, CEO of IonQ. “The ability to model catalytic reactions with speed and accuracy isn’t just a scientific achievement, it’s a preview of how hybrid computing with quantum acceleration will provide revolutionary capabilities to the industry.”

“This collaboration marks an important step towards accurately modeling activation barriers for catalyzed reactions relevant to route optimizing in drug development. We look forward to further advancements in the area,” said Anders Broo, Executive Director, Pharmaceutical Science, R&D, AstraZeneca.

“Future quantum computers are not going to replace traditional compute, but instead accelerate specific, computationally intensive processing steps as part of HPC processing pipelines,” said Eric Kessler, GM of Amazon Braket at AWS. “By combining quantum computers on Amazon Braket with scalable GPU resources on AWS, we're supporting AstraZeneca to envision how future quantum computers will be used to accelerate research in computational chemistry.”

“Bringing together state-of-the-art quantum and GPU computing in hybrid workflows is the path to realizing quantum’s potential,” said Tim Costa, Senior Director of Quantum and CUDA-X at NVIDIA. “This work represents a meaningful step towards applying quantum accelerated supercomputing to important use cases.”

IonQ and its partners demonstrated a large-scale, end-to-end simulation of a Suzuki-Miyaura reaction, which is the most complex chemical simulation run on IonQ hardware to date. The hybrid quantum-classical workflow – orchestrated via CUDA-Q on Amazon Braket, accelerated with NVIDIA H200 GPUs through AWS ParallelCluster – delivered more than a 20x speedup in time-to-solution compared to prior benchmarks. This advancement highlights the scalability of IonQ’s quantum systems and their practical potential in pharmaceutical R&D.

These results show how hybrid quantum computing can overcome computational limits in high-accuracy molecular modeling and enables the analysis of more complex chemical systems. It builds on recent IonQ demonstrations of practical applications where hybrid quantum-classical approaches outperformed purely classical methods.

For more information on this research, please visit the IonQ booth #A25 at the ISC High Performance conference in Hamburg, Germany on June 10-13, 2025 or read the full research paper at our technical blog post.

About IonQ

IonQ, Inc. is a leading commercial quantum computing and networking company, delivering high-performance systems aimed at solving the world’s largest and most complex commercial and research use cases. IonQ’s current generation quantum computers, IonQ Forte and IonQ Forte Enterprise, are the latest in a line of cutting-edge systems, boasting 36 algorithmic qubits. The company’s innovative technology and rapid growth were recognized in Newsweek’s 2025 Excellence Index 1000, Forbes’ 2025 Most Successful Mid-Cap Companies list, and Built In’s 2025 100 Best Midsize Places to Work in Washington DC and Seattle, respectively. Available through all major cloud providers, IonQ is making quantum computing more accessible and impactful than ever before. Learn more at IonQ.com.

IonQ Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Some of the forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking words. Statements that are not historical in nature, including the words “accessible,” “aimed,” “available,” “can,” “cutting-edge,” “delivering,” “enables,” “growth,” “innovative,” “impactful,” “latest,” “leader,” “leading,” “making,” “potential,” “provide,” “solving,” “toward,” “will,” and other similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These statements include those related to the IonQ’s quantum computing capabilities and plans; IonQ’s technology driving commercial quantum advantage or delivering scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computing in the future; the relevance and utility of quantum algorithms and applications run on IonQ’s quantum computers; the necessity, effectiveness, and future impacts of IonQ’s offerings available today; and the scalability, fidelity, efficiency, viability, accessibility, effectiveness, importance, reliability, performance, speed, impact, practicality, feasibility, significance, and commercial-readiness of IonQ’s offerings. Forward-looking statements are predictions, projections, and other statements about future events that are based on current expectations and assumptions and, as a result, are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause actual future events to differ materially from the forward-looking statements in this press release, including but not limited to: IonQ’s ability to implement its technical roadmap; changes in the competitive industries in which IonQ operates, including development of competing technologies; IonQ’s ability to deliver, and customers’ ability to generate, value from IonQ’s offerings; and IonQ’s ability to deliver higher speed and fidelity gates with fewer errors, enhance information transfer and network accuracy, or reduce noise and errors. You should carefully consider the foregoing factors and the other risks and uncertainties disclosed in the Company’s filings, including but not limited to those described in the “Risk Factors” section of IonQ’s most recent periodic financial report (10-Q or 10-K) filed by IonQ with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These filings identify and address other important risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and IonQ assumes no obligation and does not intend to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. IonQ does not give any assurance that it will achieve its expectations. IonQ may or may not choose to practice or otherwise use the inventions described in the issued patents in the future.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250609358259/en/

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IonQ Media contact:

Jane Mazur

press@ionq.co

IonQ Investor Contact:

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IonQ Speeds Quantum-Accelerated Drug Development Application With AstraZeneca, AWS, and NVIDIA

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