Diraq, Intel and Silicon Quantum Computing Compared
One material, three strategies
All three groups below use silicon, but they make very different choices. Two lean on the standard chip factory. One builds by placing individual atoms. Background is in silicon spin qubits explained.
Diraq and imec: the foundry route
Diraq is an Australian company reported to be a spin out from UNSW Sydney, founded by Andrew Dzurak. It works with imec, the Belgian research centre. In a result reported at the end of September 2025 and published in Nature, the partners showed spin qubits made on 300 millimeter wafers with two qubit gate fidelity above 99 percent and state preparation and measurement fidelity up to 99.9 percent. Imec's Kristiaan De Greve was reported saying the devices perform as well as top academic devices, with room for further gains.
What stands out is not only the number but the method. Earlier coverage said that randomly selected chips were tested and gave reproducible results across several devices, instead of showing one hand picked winner. Reproducibility is exactly what a factory needs. Funding details reported for Diraq came from a single directory page, so we do not repeat them here.
Intel: Tunnel Falls
On June 15, 2023, Intel announced Tunnel Falls, a 12 qubit silicon spin chip. According to Intel, it is made on 300 millimeter wafers at its D1 facility using advanced transistor processes including extreme ultraviolet lithography, with a 95 percent yield across the wafer and about 24,000 quantum dot test chips per wafer. Intel said it would share the chip with research labs, with the first recipients including the Laboratory for Physical Sciences, Sandia National Laboratories, the University of Rochester and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Tunnel Falls was a research tool, not a product aimed at customers, and we found no new 2026 Intel announcement while preparing this page. Check Intel directly for its current status.
Silicon Quantum Computing: atom by atom
Silicon Quantum Computing (SQC), led by CEO Michelle Simmons, takes the opposite tack. It places phosphorus atoms into very pure silicon with atomic precision. On February 20, 2025 it announced, in Nature Nanotechnology, that its processor ran Grover's search algorithm at up to 98.9 percent of the algorithm's theoretical maximum without error correction. SQC says this is higher than any other quantum system, which is the company's own comparison. See Grover's algorithm for what it does.
SQC says its in house process lets it iterate chip designs within one week. Simmons is quoted as saying throwing thousands or millions of low quality qubits at the problem is not going to work, a pointed statement of the quality first view.
Side by side
| Group | Approach | Reported headline |
|---|---|---|
| Diraq and imec | Standard 300 mm foundry process | Over 99 percent gate fidelity, Nature, Sept 2025 |
| Intel | Own advanced transistor fab | 12 qubit Tunnel Falls, June 2023 |
| SQC | Atom precision, in house process | 98.9 percent Grover accuracy, Feb 2025 |
What to take away
- Fidelity above 99 percent is a milestone, not the finish line. Error correction needs good qubits and a lot of them. See error correction.
- Numbers from different groups are measured differently. Use the benchmarks guide before comparing.
- The scale gap is large: these are dozens of qubits at most, not millions.
Why this is exciting anyway
Two of the three show that quantum devices can be made by the methods the world already uses for chips, and the third shows how far pure quality can be pushed. Together they sketch a credible path. For the bigger manufacturing story read why manufacturability matters. None of this is investment advice, and none of these companies has any link to the QNT memecoin.
Sources and further reading
- Bits&Chips: imec and Diraq milestone (Sept 29, 2025)
- The Quantum Insider: earlier Diraq and imec coverage (Oct 2024)
- Intel newsroom: Tunnel Falls
- SQC: Grover's algorithm announcement (Feb 2025)
Reported as of 2026-10-09. Company roadmaps are targets and often slip. Check each company's own announcements. This page is education, not financial advice, and the QNT memecoin is independent of every company named here.
Frequently asked questions
Who makes silicon spin qubits?
Among others, Diraq with imec, Intel and Silicon Quantum Computing, each with a different method.
What did Intel's Tunnel Falls do?
It was a 12 qubit research chip released in June 2023 to labs, made on 300 mm wafers.
Is 99 percent fidelity enough?
It is a useful threshold for error correction, but large machines need many such qubits.
Are these companies linked to the memecoin?
No. The QNT memecoin is independent of all of them.
Keep reading
- Silicon Spin Qubits Explained: Quantum Computing on Chip Factory Lines
How a single electron in silicon becomes a qubit, why that fits existing chip factories, and the main challenges, in plain English. - Why Manufacturability Could Decide the Quantum Race
Why building quantum chips in real factories matters as much as clever physics, with examples from photonic, silicon and other platforms. - Quantum Benchmarks Explained: Why Qubit Count Misleads
How do you measure a quantum computer? Learn what error rates, fidelity, coherence time and quantum volume mean, and why qubit count alone is not enough. - The Biggest Innovators in Quantum Computing in 2026
A tour of the companies pushing quantum forward in 2026: IBM, Google, Quantinuum Ltd, IonQ, Microsoft, PsiQuantum, Rigetti, D-Wave, Pasqal, Xanadu, IQM and NVIDIA.
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