COLLEGE PARK, Md. — IonQ, in collaboration with AstraZeneca, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and NVIDIA, has announced a major breakthrough in quantum-accelerated drug discovery, demonstrating a hybrid quantum-classical workflow that dramatically improves the speed and efficiency of pharmaceutical development.
The joint effort, to be showcased at the ISC High Performance conference in Hamburg, Germany (June 10–13, 2025), achieved a 20-fold reduction in time-to-solution for a key chemical modeling task, compared to previous demonstrations. The advancement centers on simulating a critical step in a Suzuki-Miyaura reaction—a foundational process used to synthesize small molecule drugs.
By integrating IonQ’s Forte quantum processing unit (QPU) with NVIDIA’s CUDA-Q platform, accessed through Amazon Braket and AWS ParallelCluster services, the team was able to complete what would normally require months of computational effort in just days—all while maintaining the required scientific accuracy.
“This collaboration with AstraZeneca marks a meaningful step toward practical applications for quantum computing in pharmaceutical R&D,” said IonQ CEO Niccolo de Masi. “The ability to model complex catalytic reactions quickly and accurately showcases how hybrid quantum-classical systems can revolutionize drug development pipelines.”
Dr. Anders Broo, Executive Director of Pharmaceutical Science, R&D at AstraZeneca, echoed the significance of the work. “Accurately modeling activation barriers in catalytic reactions is vital to drug route optimization. This demonstration is an important step forward.”
The initiative leverages the strengths of each partner: IonQ’s quantum hardware, NVIDIA’s high-performance GPUs, AWS’s cloud-scale infrastructure, and AstraZeneca’s expertise in pharmaceutical R&D. The result is the most complex chemical simulation yet completed on IonQ’s quantum platform, demonstrating scalability and real-world relevance.
According to AWS’s Eric Kessler, GM of Amazon Braket, the project illustrates how future quantum systems will augment—not replace—traditional high-performance computing. “Quantum will accelerate specific, computationally intensive steps in scientific workflows, and this collaboration shows how.”
NVIDIA’s Tim Costa, Senior Director of Quantum and CUDA-X, added, “Hybrid workflows that unite quantum and GPU computing are the future. This demonstration is a concrete example of how quantum acceleration is starting to address high-impact real-world problems.”
The breakthrough highlights how quantum-enhanced simulation could help shorten the drug development cycle, which currently takes over a decade and costs billions of dollars. As complexity and cost continue to rise, the pharmaceutical industry is increasingly turning to advanced computing tools to reduce early-stage research timelines and boost innovation.
IonQ and its partners view this demonstration as a foundational step toward scalable, practical applications of quantum computing in life sciences and beyond.
