14 Companies Using Quantum Theory To Accelerate Drug Discovery (Including 2 Going Public)

(Updated: 24.02.2024)

Molecular mechanics (MM) is a traditional computational approach when it comes to modeling in synthetic organic chemistry, medicinal chemistry, and versatile aspects of drug design.

However, MM methods have significant limitations, for example, when used to study electron-based properties within the drug-receptor microenvironment. Quantum mechanical (QM) methods allow for substantial increases in the accuracy of predictions and provide much more relevant models of chemical and biological objects and their interactions, but QM methods are extremely (often prohibitively) computationally costly.

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However, a series of advancements over recent years have allowed us to expand our horizons in this direction, for example, the emergence of density functional theory (DFT), the overall increase in computation power, and the emergence of distributed cloud-based computational infrastructures.

In this post, I am summarizing several notable computational companies (primarily startups), applying quantum calculation methods—always in conjunction with other methods—for drug discovery, and promising to boost the success rates of pharmaceutical research. 

The companies below are listed in alphabetical order. We intend to update this post in several months; feel free to suggest novel relevant companies to be considered for inclusion in the list. 

Aqemia

Aqemia is a spin-off of École Normale Supérieure leveraging disruptive algorithms from 8 years of research led by its CEO and co-founder Dr. Maximilien Levesque. The company focuses on de novo, structure-based design of lead-like molecules by combining quantum and artificial intelligence (AI). A unique quantum-inspired statistical mechanics algorithm that predicts the affinity between a compound and a therapeutic target accurately and 10,000 times faster than the competition. Aqemia’s AI can generate compounds with increasing accuracy by getting feedback from the affinity predictor. 

In February 2022, Aqemia announced a pilot study with Janssen to utilize its quantum physics-driven drug discovery technology to predict the potency of small molecules for a given target based on physics-based calculations for datasets selected by Janssen.

Aqemia recently announced a €30 million addition to its Series A funding, elevating the total investment of the round to €60 million entirely through equity. The initial €30 million was secured in 2022, under the leadership of the French venture capital firm Eurazeo and the public financial institution Bpifrance, with Elaia, a longstanding investor, also contributing.

This funding phase was further extended with the support of Wendel Growth, a French growth equity firm, alongside the continued backing from all of Aqemia's prior investors.

Presently, Aqemia is advancing three of its cancer-targeting drug candidates through preclinical animal testing. Remarkably, these projects have swiftly progressed to the preclinical stage in under two years, with expectations to move into clinical trials by 2025.

Algorithmiq

Algorithmiq, founded in 2020 and headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, is a trailblazer in developing quantum algorithms for the life sciences industry, focusing on challenges such as molecular structure prediction and drug development. The company is led by Co-Founder and CEO Professor Sabrina Maniscalco.

With expertise spanning quantum information, complex systems, and computational physics, the company stands at the intersection of technology and drug development​​.

In June 2023, Algorithmiq raised $15 million in a Series A funding round led by Inventure VC, along with contributions from Tesi, Presidio Ventures, and Thames Trust, among other existing backers. This funding is aimed at advancing proof-of-concept work with global pharmaceutical companies, with the goal of significantly reducing the time and cost associated with drug discovery and development​​.

At the core of Algorithmiq's mission is the ambition to harness quantum computing to expedite the drug discovery process, leveraging a proprietary platform, Aurora, and a partnership with IBM to utilize their leading hardware. The company's innovative approach includes a method for extracting information from quantum devices for quantum chemistry simulations and a new framework, Quantum Network Medicine, to address the complexity of cell biology​​.

Hafnium Labs

Founded in 2018 in Denmark, Hafnium Labs is an early-stage research startup developing two software packages for high precision simulations of physical properties of pure components and mixtures, and for modeling electrolytes. Both software products, Q-props and Epsilon, combine the latest advances in quantum chemistry, artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud computing to achieve high accuracy of predictions.

By leveraging its cloud-based computational capabilities, Hafnium Labs accurately predicts chemistry to accelerate drug discovery, development of new materials, and processes. It also has a pay-per-use business model, which the company claims to be more affordable, compared to usual license-based models for similar products.

So far Hafnium Labs has raised a total of $1.8 million via grant money from Innovation Fund Denmark, IBM, and Climate-KIC Acceleration Programme (EIT).

Kuano

Kuano is a UK-based company founded at the beginning of 2020. This start-up is developing novel AI and quantum solutions for designing enzymes, addressing key liabilities such as specificity, potency, and resistance.

Kuano’s research platform utilizes structural data on the target enzyme or catalytic site, combining quantum simulation and quantum-inspired artificial intelligence and chemistry. 

The company has In-house programs in epigenetics, protein degradation, immuno-metabolism, infectious disease, and others, while also working with partners on next-generation inhibitors of clinically and commercially validated enzyme targets. 

In 2023, Kuano announced raising more than $2 million in seed investment, led by Mercia Ventures, and including ACF Investors, Ascension Ventures, o2h Ventures, Meltwind Advisory LLP, and other Angel investors. According to the company, the investment will facilitate further validation of Kuano’s quantum simulation platform for the design of more effective drug candidates targeting enzymes.

Menten AI

Menten AI is a Canadian start-up founded in 2018, that develops a software platform for protein design powered by machine learning and quantum computing. The company uses proprietary algorithms of quantum optimization which it believes can significantly improve the accuracy of drug discovery while reducing cost and development time. The team at Menten AI created the first protein design algorithm for current and near-term quantum computers and they were the first to apply a quantum computer for designing a protein molecule. 

The company claims they can perform one design cycle, from target selection to in vivo efficacy, in less than six months. Menten AI drug pipeline is currently focused on peptide therapeutics for indications with high unmet medical needs.

Menten AI raised a total of $4 million from various investors and has partnerships with D-Wave supercomputer, IBM-Q, and a recently announced collaboration with Xanadu. 

Molecular Quantum Solutions 

Molecular Quantum Solutions (MQS), founded in 2019 and based in Søborg, Denmark, specializes in leveraging quantum computing and computational models to advance the pharma, biotech, and chemical industries.

The company's technology focuses on the calculation of properties of materials and chemicals, aiming to provide innovative solutions through a combination of supercomputers, quantum computing technology, and advanced computational tools. MQS offers its algorithms via a dashboard, an application programming interface (API), or as compiled packages, facilitating high-performance cloud infrastructure for quantum chemistry-based predictions​​​​.

In June 2023, MQS successfully raised €600,000 in a pre-seed funding round. This round was led by Scale Capital, with contributions from Rockstart and Stokbro Invest. The funding is intended to help MQS convert their developed tool stack into a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution for the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, with the goal of accelerating R&D efforts and reducing the need for expensive laboratory experiments​​.

Pharmacelera

Barcelona-based computational startup Pharmacelera, founded in 2015, is applying quantum theory to boost drug design via their two primary software packages: PharmScreen and PharmQSAR. 

The first tool allows for an accurate ligand-based virtual screening, using a high precision 3D ligand-alignment algorithm based on the interaction fields. It can generate a higher rate of diversity among leads, compared to classical methods and tools. 

PharmQSAR is a 3D quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) tool that enables a combination of multiple fields of interaction in order to perform CoMFA/CoMSIA studies.

The company raised a total of over $3.9 million from grants and pharmaceutical business angels. 

Here is a 2020 interview with Dr. Enric Gibert, Pharmacelera’s co-founder and CEO, where he answers questions about the state and future of quantum physics in modern drug design.

PharmCADD

PharmaCADD is a Southern Korea-based startup founded in 2019. The main technology platform of PharmaCADD called “Pharmulator” operates with deep neural network algorithms, molecular dynamic simulation, and quantum mechanics computation as key technologies. Pharmulator can reconstruct 3D protein structure from amino acid sequence within just several seconds.

The company collaborated with another Korean startup, Genesen, to develop drugs for multiple sclerosis. Recently, the company made moves to expand into India, US, and France. 

The company raised a total of $19.8 million from SD Group and other investors. 

Polaris Quantum Biotech

POLARISqb is a Durham-based developer of the world's first drug discovery software built for quantum computers, combining artificial intelligence and quantum approach. At the heart of POLARISqb technology is Tachyon drug design platform, used for executing distributed molecular design work across the cloud, managed by an automated process that allows for searching large chemical libraries, while running multiple projects in parallel. By developing proprietary software for quantum systems, the company claims it can substantially accelerate drug design and get leads of higher quality. Due to the inherent “agnosticism” of Tachyon system, it is able to work in multiple diseases and indications.

In 2020, POLARISqb partnered with Fujitsu to jointly develop a research platform to speed up the discovery of treatments for dengue fever and other indications. In 2021, POLARISqb entered into a collaboration with Auransa to focus on neglected women's diseases. In 2022, POLARISqb entered into a collaboration with PhoreMost to bring the power of quantum computing to the search for new cancer therapies. 

Recently, Polaris Quantum Biotech partnered with Scientist.com to offer researchers access to the Quantum-Aided Drug Design platform, QuADD, leveraging quantum computing to accelerate drug discovery by optimizing molecular libraries in days instead of months.

The company raised a total of $2.1 million to develop its platform.

ProteinQure

Founded in 2017, Toronto-based startup ProteinQure is combining quantum computing, reinforcement learning, and atomistic simulations to design novel protein drugs. Using this mix of technologies they model essential processes, such as protein folding, and the underlying physics of interactions between biomolecules.

Using their proprietary algorithms and external supercomputing resources, ProteinQure can design small peptide-based therapeutics (including cyclic peptides), and explore protein structures without known crystal structures.

The company raised a total of $4.6 million from various investors, including Creative Destruction Lab and Felicis Ventures. 

in 2023, ProteinQurere announced promising preclinical results for a tumor-targeting peptide-drug conjugate in a mouse model of triple negative breast cancer, demonstrating selective delivery and reduced toxicity, highlighting its potential as a targeted chemotherapeutic strategy.

Qunova Computing 

Qunova Computing, founded in 2021 in Daejeon, South Korea, specializes in AI-powered quantum computing solutions targeting the life science sector.

The company, led by CEO and co-founder June-Koo Kevin Rhee, has secured seed funding from ID Ventures, TInvestment, Megazone Clouds, Bluepoint Partners, and BDCLabs in December 2021.

Recognized for its innovative quantum computing software solutions, it was named an 'IP-Value Strong Small Enterprise' by KOTEC/KIBO in December 2023, with a 1 billion KRW 'IP Value Plus Guarantee'. Qunova collaborates with POSCO Holdings and PASQAL to apply quantum computing in steelmaking and material development

Riverlane

The website of UK-based Riverlane reads “the world's first quantum engineering company.”. Founded in 2016 in Cambridge, the company raised a total of $43 million to advance its quantum hardware and software technologies for a wide range of applications, including pharmaceutical research and chemistry. 

In July 2021, Riverlane joined forces with Rigetti Computing, alongside existing partners Astex Pharmaceuticals, to advance quantum computing for drug discovery. 

A notable project by Riverlane is their operating system for quantum computers – Deltaflow.OS®, which addresses one of the bottlenecks of quantum computing today: quantum error correction. 

Read more about Riverlane here: This Company Makes Quantum Computing Actually Useful

Roivant Discovery

Roivant Discovery is the scientific subsidiary of Roivant Sciences (NASDAQ: ROIV), a publicly-traded umbrella company, founded in 2014 by Vivek Ramaswamy. Roivant Discovery was formed by acquiring Boston-based computational drug discovery company Silicon Therapeutics -- a developer of a research platform combining physics-based molecular simulations, quantum physics, statistical thermodynamics, and molecular dynamics for the improvement of conventional drug discovery.

Silicon Therapeutics was focused on innate immunity in cancer and inflammation, and it had developed its own discovery pipeline of early small molecule drug candidates (4 in a discovery phase and 2 in the pre-clinical phase, as of June 2019). The company was also active in the field of conformational genetics, linking genetic mutations with biological functions.

In February 2021, Roivant Sciences acquired Silicon Therapeutics for $450 million in Roivant equity, with additional potential regulatory and commercial milestone payments.

XtalPi

Founded in 2014 by a group of quantum physicists at MIT, XtalPi is a quantum physics-based, AI-powered drug R&D company with the mission to revolutionize drug discovery and development by improving the speed, scale, novelty, and success rate. While headquartered in Boston, the company also has a major operational and research presence in China. 

Its Intelligent Digital Drug Discovery and Development (ID4) platform, incorporating quantum mechanics, artificial intelligence, and high-performance cloud computing algorithms, allows predicting with high precision physiochemical and pharmaceutical properties of small-molecule drug candidates, as well as their crystal structures -- critical elements in successful drug R&D.   

By this time, XtalPi raised a staggering amount of $786.4 million from numerous investors, including Sequoia China, Tencent, and Google, which makes it one of the most well-funded computational drug discovery startups on the market. The company has multiple research collaborations with pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer. 

In October 2023, Xtalpi filed for an IPO in Hong Kong. 

Zapata Computing

Boston-based Zapata Computing is a quantum software company that offers computing solutions for industrial and commercial use for a number of use cases, including pharmaceutical research. Zapata was founded in 2017 and originated in the laboratory of Alán Aspuru-Guzik at Harvard, where he had been developing quantum computing methods for chemical simulations. 

Zapata raised a total of $67.4 million from multiple investors, including Prelude Ventures, and  Comcast Ventures. The company has built its research platform “Orquestra”, which combines a powerful software platform and quantum algorithm libraries for applications in chemistry, biopharma, machine learning, and optimization. 

Read or listen to our interview with Dr. Christopher Savoie, Co-founder, and CEO at Zapata Computing, where he explains the current state of quantum computing, existing opportunities, and challenges, and provides his vision about what is coming next in the exciting field of quantum computing and quantum theory applications in drug discovery.

In 2024, Zapata Computing, in collaboration with Insilico Medicine, the University of Toronto, and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, showcased the first use of quantum-enhanced generative AI to produce viable cancer drug candidates, KRAS inhibitors. 

In 2023, Zapata AI announced plans to go public through a business combination with Andretti Acquisition Corp., valuing Zapata AI at $200 million in pre-money equity value.

This move, expected to close in Q1 2024, aims to fuel innovation, customer acquisition, and growth strategy, providing up to $84 million to the pro forma company's balance sheet.

Topic: AI in Bio