IonQ has announced breakthrough results from a collaborative quantum computing project that could dramatically accelerate pharmaceutical research timelines. Working with AstraZeneca, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and NVIDIA, the company developed a quantum-enhanced workflow that achieved more than a 20-fold improvement in time-to-solution for simulating a critical chemical reaction used in drug development.
The demonstration, set to be presented at the ISC High Performance conference in Hamburg, Germany, focused on the Suzuki-Miyaura reaction—a widely used method for synthesizing small-molecule pharmaceuticals. The hybrid quantum-classical system reduced the projected runtime from months to days while maintaining scientific accuracy, according to IonQ's announcement.
Quantum-Classical Integration Delivers Unprecedented Speed
The breakthrough was achieved by integrating IonQ's Forte quantum processing unit (QPU) with NVIDIA's CUDA-Q platform through Amazon Braket and AWS ParallelCluster services. The 36-qubit Forte system represents IonQ's current generation quantum computer, and this demonstration marks the most complex chemical simulation run on IonQ hardware to date.
"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."
The Suzuki-Miyaura reaction, often modeled for its complexity and industrial relevance, typically requires high-fidelity simulations that can take weeks or even months on conventional computers. Traditional approaches struggle with certain molecular interactions that scale poorly with system size, creating computational bottlenecks in early-stage drug discovery.
Addressing Pharmaceutical Industry Challenges
Developing new drugs can take ten or more years and cost billions of dollars, making advancements that streamline early-stage research particularly valuable. The pharmaceutical industry has long recognized the potential of computational chemistry to predict molecular behavior before laboratory testing, but conventional computing methods face significant limitations when modeling complex molecular systems.
"We are turning months into days," said de Masi in an interview. "And in computational drug discovery, turning months into days can save lives—and it is going to change the world."
Anders Broo, Executive Director of Pharmaceutical Science R&D at AstraZeneca, emphasized the clinical relevance of the advancement: "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."
Hybrid Computing Architecture
The success of the demonstration relied on the integration of quantum and classical computing resources rather than replacing traditional compute entirely. Eric Kessler, GM of Amazon Braket at AWS, explained the approach: "Future quantum computers are not going to replace traditional compute, but instead accelerate specific, computationally intensive processing steps as part of HPC processing pipelines. 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."
The workflow was orchestrated via CUDA-Q on Amazon Braket and accelerated with NVIDIA H200 GPUs through AWS ParallelCluster. Tim Costa, Senior Director of Quantum and CUDA-X at NVIDIA, noted: "Bringing together state-of-the-art quantum and GPU computing in hybrid workflows is the path to realizing quantum's potential. This work represents a meaningful step towards applying quantum accelerated supercomputing to important use cases."
Future Implications and Scalability
De Masi positioned this achievement as an inflection point for quantum computing applications in drug discovery. He highlighted the potential for even greater advances as quantum systems scale: "With the systems we have now, IonQ Forte, which has 36 qubits, we are already demonstrating narrow commercial advantage, so just imagine the double exponential power of next generation systems with hundreds of millions of qubits."
The results demonstrate how hybrid quantum computing can overcome computational limits in high-accuracy molecular modeling and enable analysis of more complex chemical systems. IonQ frames the achievement as proof-of-concept for a broader class of applications across healthcare, chemistry, and materials science.
The collaboration represents part of IonQ's broader strategy to demonstrate commercial use cases for quantum computing by combining quantum hardware with cloud-based platforms and high-performance computing frameworks. As pharmaceutical companies seek ways to shorten the multi-year, multi-billion-dollar process of bringing new drugs to market, techniques that reduce early-stage bottlenecks are likely to receive growing attention from the industry.
