EU Launches SPINS Quantum Pilot Line Led by imec

Building a good qubit isn't the hard part anymore. Building a billion of them that all work the same way is. That manufacturing problem, not the physics, is what separates today's lab demonstrations from the fault-tolerant quantum machines the field keeps promising. And it's what the European Union just threw serious money at.

SPINS (Semiconductor Pilot Line for Industrial Quantum NanoSystems) launched this week as an EU-backed pilot line for semiconductor-based quantum chips, led by Belgium's imec and funded through the Chips Joint Undertaking with national co-funding from ten member states. The premise: if spin qubits can be fabricated on the same 300mm wafer processes that produce billions of classical transistors, the semiconductor industry's existing infrastructure becomes quantum computing's scaling engine.

Whether that argument survives contact with multi-country coordination, three competing silicon platforms, and the gap between >99% gate fidelity on a handful of qubits and millions working in concert is the part worth watching.

The spin qubit bet

The EU is placing a specific bet with SPINS: spin qubits manufactured in CMOS-compatible fabs will win the scaling race.

The physics make the case. A spin qubit encodes information in the spin state of a single electron trapped in a semiconductor quantum dot. At roughly 100 nanometers across, these qubits are about 3,000 times smaller than the superconducting transmon qubits IBM and Google use. That gap matters because it's the difference between fitting a handful of qubits on a chip and fitting millions. A recent review in the European Physical Journal put it plainly: "To truly achieve large-scale semiconductor-based quantum computing within a short time scale, there seems to be little choice but to marginally customize existing manufacturing technologies."

The manufacturing story may be even more persuasive. Superconducting qubits require custom fabrication processes. Trapped ions need vacuum chambers and laser systems. Spin qubits, at least in principle, can ride on processes that already exist in the world's most advanced semiconductor fabs. When the industry spends hundreds of billions annually perfecting nanometer-scale fabrication, borrowing that infrastructure is a considerable head start.

The trade-off has historically been fidelity. Spin qubits lagged behind superconducting and trapped-ion systems on gate quality. Recent results suggest the gap has closed, and SPINS exists in part because of them.

imec's proof point

SPINS has credibility because of a Nature paper published in September 2025 by imec researchers showing industry-compatible silicon spin-qubit unit cells exceeding 99% gate fidelity. That crosses the threshold most error-correction schemes require for fault-tolerant computation.

The important detail: these qubits weren't fabricated in a university clean room with bespoke processes. They came off imec's 300mm production line using foundry-compatible techniques. A companion result on record-low charge noise in silicon MOS quantum dots on the same platform reinforced the finding. Noise levels that have plagued semiconductor qubits can be managed at industrial scale.

imec also demonstrated EUV lithography for silicon MOS quantum dot qubits at IEEE IEDM 2025, the same extreme ultraviolet lithography that defines leading-edge classical chip manufacturing. Using EUV for qubits signals that quantum chip fabrication can share the same toolchain as conventional semiconductors instead of requiring a parallel infrastructure.

These results go directly at the central skepticism about spin qubits: that lab-quality devices don't survive factory-scale production. imec's data says they can. SPINS is the vehicle for proving it with real users.

Three platforms, one pilot line

SPINS consolidates three semiconductor platforms under one consortium, each targeting a different spin qubit approach.

First is Ge/GeSi on 300mm wafers, led by imec. Germanium-based quantum dots offer strong spin-orbit coupling, enabling all-electrical qubit control without micromagnets or microwave antennas. imec's 300mm infrastructure is the backbone here.

Second is FD-SOI (Fully Depleted Silicon-on-Insulator), led by VTT and CEA-Leti. This platform builds on the QLSI project that CEA-Leti led to gather European silicon qubit teams. FD-SOI is commercially mature, since GlobalFoundries already fabricates classical chips on its 22nm FD-SOI process, making it a pragmatic path for near-term quantum chip access.

Third is Si/SiGe heterostructures, led by a German consortium including Forschungszentrum Jülich, Fraunhofer IPMS and IAF, and IHP. This is the platform Intel uses for its Tunnel Falls chip, and where QuTech has demonstrated spin shuttling via traveling wave potentials. Fraunhofer handles high-resolution structuring of qubit and processor elements beyond the limits of standard optical lithography.

Running three platforms in parallel sounds expensive and redundant. But nobody knows which silicon approach wins for large-scale quantum, and the pilot line can serve a broader community this way than a single-platform operation would.

The open-access gamble

Here's where SPINS gets strategically interesting. The EU is building shared, open-access quantum chip manufacturing infrastructure. The United States, increasingly, is not.

In January, IonQ announced a $1.8 billion SkyWater acquisition to create what it called "the only vertically integrated full-stack quantum platform company." Intel runs its own fabs for spin qubit development. Quantum Motion partnered with GlobalFoundries for fabrication on its 22nm FD-SOI process, a bilateral deal rather than open infrastructure.

The US model is proprietary: companies secure dedicated foundry access through partnerships or acquisitions. The EU model, through SPINS and its sibling pilot lines, is collective: shared infrastructure that any qualified team can access through MPW runs, process design kits, and standardized characterization frameworks.

Proprietary access gives companies tighter control over process optimization and IP. Open access lowers barriers for startups and academic groups that can't afford their own fab partnerships, which is exactly the ecosystem the EU wants to build.

SPINS is one of six quantum pilot lines the Chips JU selected last year, backed by a combined \u20ac145 million in EU and national funding. SUPREME covers superconducting qubits with \u20ac50 million. P4Q targets photonic quantum computing. Each qubit technology gets a manufacturing pathway that doesn't depend on cutting a deal with a single company.

The ecosystem behind the acronym

SPINS spans ten countries and more than 30 partners: national research institutes, semiconductor manufacturers, and quantum startups in a configuration that's either impressively pan-European or a coordination nightmare.

The startups are worth tracking. France's Quobly, with \u20ac40 million in combined funding, is pushing toward 100 physical qubits on silicon with CEA. Finland's SemiQon, a VTT spinout with EIC backing, builds silicon-based quantum processors aimed at affordability. The Netherlands' Groove Quantum focuses on semiconductor qubit design. C12 Quantum Electronics is the outlier, bringing a carbon nanotube approach to a consortium otherwise built on silicon.

The heavyweights provide manufacturing muscle. Infineon has semiconductor process expertise from its quantum hardware partnership with Quantinuum. Siltronic is one of Europe's major silicon wafer suppliers. QuTech, the TU Delft/TNO joint venture, has two decades of spin qubit research behind it, including the experimental realization of the original Loss-DiVincenzo proposal from 1998.

A consortium this size raises obvious questions about execution speed. EU research programs have a reputation for producing excellent papers and mediocre products. The Chips JU structure, which sits within a broader semiconductor ecosystem commanding nearly \u20ac11 billion in combined funding, is supposed to fix that. But the proof is in the fabricated wafers, not the grant agreements.

The lab-to-fab gap

Academic labs have demonstrated two-qubit gate fidelities exceeding 99.9% in silicon. Small arrays of quantum dots work well in carefully controlled experiments. But scaling to millions of qubits requires solving yield, uniformity, and variability problems that academic clean rooms aren't built for. imec's own researchers have noted that "off-the-shelf transistor processes cannot be directly transferred to qubit structures." The modifications needed are real, even if the base infrastructure is shared.

The specifics are hard. Qubits operate at millikelvin temperatures, which constrains materials and interconnects. Charge noise from the silicon substrate degrades coherence. Gate electrodes need sub-nanometer precision. And every qubit on a million-qubit chip has to perform within tight tolerances, something classical chip manufacturing achieves through decades of process development that quantum fabrication is only beginning.

SPINS addresses this by developing process design kits, standardized characterization frameworks, and cryo-CMOS control electronics. CEA and Quobly have already demonstrated cryo-CMOS readout circuits consuming 18.5\u03bcW per qubit, which matters when you're trying to scale to thousands of qubits inside a dilution refrigerator with limited cooling power. Not glamorous work. But it's the kind of engineering that determines whether quantum computing actually works at scale.

Where the competition stands

SPINS doesn't operate in a vacuum. Intel has been fabricating 12-qubit arrays on its 300mm line and developing next-generation chips beyond Tunnel Falls. Quantum Motion packed 1,024 quantum dots into less than 0.1mm\u00b2 on GlobalFoundries' 22nm process and validated them in under five minutes, a hundred times faster than anyone had done before.

The competitive picture is splitting along geographic lines. The US has Intel running its own fabs, IonQ acquiring SkyWater for $1.8 billion, and GlobalFoundries offering foundry services to quantum startups. Europe now has SPINS, SUPREME, and P4Q as collective infrastructure. Asia remains quiet on dedicated quantum fab infrastructure, though TSMC's advanced processes are used by some quantum chip designers.

The EU's broader quantum strategy adds context. The Quantum Technologies Flagship, launched in 2018 with \u20ac1 billion over ten years, funds fundamental research. The Quantum Europe Strategy from July 2025 targets global leadership by 2030. A formal Quantum Act expected this year would codify governance and funding. SPINS is the manufacturing layer connecting all of it to actual hardware.

What to watch

The next 18 months will determine whether SPINS is a turning point or another well-funded European research project that produces papers instead of products.

The near-term milestone is the first MPW run offering access to external users. That's when SPINS goes from internal capability development to actual infrastructure. How many startups and research groups submit designs, and whether turnaround time is competitive with bilateral fab partnerships, will say a lot.

Watch for fidelity results on foundry-fabricated devices from the other two platforms. imec's >99% gate fidelity paper set the bar. If SPINS partner devices on FD-SOI and Si/SiGe can match it, the three-platform strategy starts looking like genuine redundancy rather than political compromise.

The Quantum Act, expected later in 2026, matters for sustained funding. Pilot lines burn money. Without a legislative framework that commits resources beyond initial grant periods, SPINS risks becoming a well-equipped facility that loses its operating budget before it reaches critical mass.

And there's a more fundamental question hanging over all spin qubit efforts: can anyone demonstrate a logical qubit with error correction on a semiconductor platform? Superconducting systems have started hitting that milestone. Spin qubits haven't. SPINS doesn't need to solve that problem to be useful, but the field needs to solve it for the manufacturing thesis to pay off.

The EU is betting that quantum computing's future looks more like semiconductor manufacturing than bespoke laboratory science. SPINS is the infrastructure to test that bet. The physics says it should work. The engineering is extraordinarily hard. And the history of European industrial policy says execution is everything.