After years of working together in other areas, quantum computing software company Zapata AI and quantum hardware firm IonQ have entered into a strategic alliance focused on benchmarking generative AI techniques on IonQ’s hardware.
Initially, the partnership will bring Zapata’s application development experts and IonQ’s scientists, advanced compute technology, and services together to deliver on work on uncovering potential advantages that quantum computing can provide for generative AI projects and related real-world business problems. The companies also will jointly pursue go-to-market activities to scale the delivery of IonQ’s services with Zapata’s products for enterprise customers, the pair stated
“IonQ’s commercial success is a reflection of the value that our customers attribute to our systems, yet the onramp into quantum computing can be challenging. Our partnership with Zapata will remove roadblocks and accelerate quantum adoption” said Rima Alameddine, CRO at IonQ. “We are excited to continue our work with Zapata and are confident that this partnership will drive new breakthroughs in the development of generative AI models and help enterprise companies better solve industrial-scale problems.”
“We’re looking forward to building on our previous work together and diving deeper into quantum generative AI,” said Yudong Cao, CTO and co-founder at Zapata. “Quantum-enhanced generative modeling is the first place we expect to see a quantum advantage for industrial problems, including drug discovery, optimization, language processing, and predictive analytics. We’re excited to see what impact we could create with IonQ’s advanced technology.”
Regarding the pair’s previous work, IonQ was a key partner in efforts that won Zapata a multi-year award for quantum benchmarking from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency last year. Also, prior to that, Zapata used IonQ’s hardware to generate high-resolution data as part of a machine learning project.
Dan O’Shea has covered telecommunications and related topics including semiconductors, sensors, retail systems, digital payments and quantum computing/technology for over 25 years.