QC Ware and IonQ Demonstrate High-Precision Hybrid Quantum Workflow for Drug Discovery

Joint test on IonQ Forte hardware lands within 4% of benchmark, clearing the chemical-accuracy bar for enzyme active-site modeling via Amazon Braket

PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept. 1, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- QC Ware today announced a technology demonstration of a hybrid quantum-classical chemistry workflow using its Promethium® platform and IonQ's Forte trapped-ion quantum computer via Amazon Braket.

The demonstration modeled the heme active site of cytochrome P450nor, a nitric oxide reductase in the cytochrome P450 superfamily — the same superfamily whose monooxygenase members carry out most human drug metabolism. By pairing GPU-accelerated classical pre-processing in Promethium with quantum measurements on IonQ Forte, the workflow calculated electrostatic interaction energy within 0.5 kcal/mol (~4%) of classical benchmarks. This falls well inside the 1 kcal/mol threshold for chemical accuracy and delivers more than double the accuracy of the standard classical mean-field method. For the biopharma industry, more accurately calculating electrostatic interaction energy, a major factor in how tightly a drug candidate binds to its target, at complex metal centers such as the iron site in P450nor, could improve candidate ranking and help identify metabolic risks earlier in the drug-discovery process.

"Running the same hybrid workflow on IonQ's trapped-ion architecture, following our recent demonstration on other quantum hardware, shows that Promethium's approach to combining classical and quantum computing is not tied to a single type of quantum hardware," said Dr. Kin-Joe Sham, Co-Founder and COO at QC Ware. "We believe this hardware-agnostic approach gives researchers flexibility as quantum computing continues to mature."

"Every month spent advancing a drug candidate on flawed metabolic data is wasted time and mounting risk," said Scott Millard, Chief Business Officer at IonQ. "QC Ware and IonQ have shown that hybrid quantum-classical workflows can predict certain binding behavior accurately enough for discovery teams to confidently rank candidates and catch toxicity risks early. We believe that's real quantum impact on real health outcomes. I can't wait to see what this partnership delivers."

Technical Highlights:

• Promethium Preprocessing: Promethium built and preprocessed a complex 115-atom model of the P450nor active site containing over 1,000 molecular orbitals. It automatically isolated the strongly correlated region down to a 4-orbital active space mapped onto 8 qubits, which IonQ Forte measured in a single basis before returning results for Promethium to compute final interaction energies classically.
• Hardware Architecture: IonQ Forte's all-to-all qubit connectivity enabled complex two-qubit entangling gates to execute as designed without the routing overhead or additional error typical of limited-connectivity architectures.
• Biopharma Impact: Accurately predicting binding energy at iron sites in enzymes like P450nor could enable pharmaceutical researchers to better rank drug candidates and identify metabolic risks earlier in the R&D pipeline.

Supported in part by Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud compute credits, the demonstration highlights how QC Ware's cloud-native Promethium® platform can potentially allow classical GPU clusters to seamlessly connect with cloud quantum computing resources on Amazon Braket.

Available today, Promethium's GPU-native architecture enables researchers to apply quantum chemistry across larger molecular systems and more compounds than has traditionally been practical. For selected workloads, Promethium runs demanding calculations up to 20× faster than conventional CPU-based DFT platforms, helping researchers generate molecular-level insights in hours instead of weeks and accelerating decision-making across drug discovery, catalysis, and materials science.

Media contact: [email protected] 

About QC Ware

QC Ware is a quantum computing software company. We are developing applications that unlock the power of quantum computing for drug discovery, material design and other industry verticals. Our Promethium platform provides GPU-accelerated quantum chemistry for molecular modeling and drug discovery, helping customers to make better discovery decisions today while exploring the hybrid quantum-classical workflows of tomorrow. QC Ware also organizes and hosts Q2B quantum computing conferences in Japan, Europe and the United States.

About IonQ

IonQ, Inc. [NYSE: IONQ] is the world's leading quantum platform and foundry - delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ's newest generation of quantum computers, the IonQ Tempo, is the latest in a line of cutting-edge systems. Earlier systems have helped customers and partners including Amazon Web Services, AstraZeneca, and NVIDIA achieve a 20x performance increase over previous quantum solutions and accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense. In 2025, the company achieved 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, setting a world record in quantum computing performance. 

Headquartered in College Park, Maryland, IonQ has operations across North America, Latin America, EMEA, and APAC. Our quantum computing services have been available through all major cloud providers since 2021, while we also meet the needs of networking and sensing customers across land, sea, air, and space. IonQ is making quantum platforms more accessible and impactful than ever before. Learn more at IonQ.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes forward-looking statements relating to QC Ware's expectations, hopes, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of words such as "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "intend," "may," "plan," "potential," "project," "seek," "should," "will," "would" and similar expressions that predict or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters, but the absence of these words does not mean that a statement is not forward-looking. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the impact of hybrid quantum-classical chemistry workflows on the drug discovery process and the potential for Promethium to drive such impact. These statements are based on various assumptions and on the current expectations of QC Ware's management and are not predictions of actual performance. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including changes in business, market, financial, political and legal conditions; the rapid evolution of quantum computing and flaws or errors in Promethium or flaws in or misuse of quantum computing in general; and risks related to working with quantum hardware providers.