By Rafael Müller
Publication Date: 2026-09-23 00:51:00
IBM has spent the past two weeks rolling out one headline-grabbing initiative after another — from a protein simulation that cracked the finals of a prestigious computing award to a fresh innovation incubator with a university partner. Wall Street, so far, has shrugged.
The company’s collaboration with the Cleveland Clinic and Japan’s RIKEN reached the finals of the 2026 ACM Gordon Bell Prize on September 9. The team managed to simulate a protein containing 12,635 atoms — the largest biologically relevant molecule ever rendered on a quantum computer. That milestone sits alongside a string of other announcements: an open-source “NASA-IBM Lunar Foundation Model” unveiled with the U.S. space agency on September 10, and a partnership with Lockheed Martin to build an innovation hub at ETH Zurich.
Closer to the commercial front, IBM launched an innovation incubator with Marist University, built around the IBM z17 mainframe system, deepening an existing research…
