Intel Classiq Deal: Intel to Buy Quantum Software as Rivals Fund Chip Plants

By Stock Titan Editorial Team Published October 26, 2026, 05:00 PM EDT

What does Classiq do?

A quantum computer works with qubits, the quantum version of the 0s and 1s in an ordinary computer. Programs for these machines are still often written close to the hardware, one operation at a time. Intel’s release calls the result “custom hand-crafted circuits.” It is slow work, and only specialists can do it.

Classiq, an Israeli company founded in 2020, automates that step. Intel’s announcement says Classiq “plays a similar role in quantum computing” to the chip design software of forty years ago. Intel calls it “agnostic to the underlying qubit modality and hardware”, meaning it does not care which kind of quantum machine runs the result.

The customers Classiq names in its May 2025 funding announcement are big companies trying the technology early: BMW, Citi, Deloitte, Rolls-Royce, Mizuho and Toshiba. That round raised $110 million, and a November 2025 round took Classiq’s total funding to over $200 million. Classiq has not published its revenue, and neither company has given a headcount.

Intel already had quantum software of its own. Its Quantum SDK, released in February 2023, is a toolkit for writing quantum programs in C++ and testing them on a simulated machine. Classiq works a level higher, building the circuit from a description of the goal, and it already reaches many makers’ machines.

Why is Intel buying Classiq?

IonQ, a company built around quantum computing, completed its purchase of SkyWater Technology on July 31, 2026. SkyWater is a contract chip factory, and IonQ’s January announcement valued the deal at about $1.8 billion. In its completion release IonQ said owning it “unlocks IonQ’s semiconductor-based approach to manufacturing new generations of our quantum computers.” IonQ is also one of Classiq’s investors.

IBM went two ways at once. In May it announced Anderon, a factory in Albany, New York, for quantum wafers, the silicon discs chips are cut from. IBM is putting in $1 billion of cash, and in September the Commerce Department finalized a $1 billion federal chips award for it. In August it completed the purchase of HRL Laboratories, a lab known for silicon spin qubits, the same kind of qubit Intel builds.

Intel starts from the factory side. Its release says it is “the only company capable of producing qubit chips and complex cryogenic control electronics at-scale, using equipment and processes common to conventional silicon-based semiconductor manufacturing.” Cryogenic means built to work in the extreme cold quantum chips need. That is Intel’s own claim, and no outside party has tested it in anything we read.

Read side by side, each buyer added the piece its own announcement said it was missing. IonQ wanted a chip supply it controls. IBM wanted spin qubit know-how next to its main design. Intel, by its own account, had the chips and wanted the layer that makes them usable, and its chief executive Lip-Bu Tan said the deal “transforms Intel’s Quantum Computing Group into a full-stack quantum computing business.” That reading is ours; none of the three said anything about the others.

What is Intel doing in quantum computing?

Intel says it has invested in quantum computing since 2015. Its best known chip is Tunnel Falls, announced in June 2023, which stores information in the spin of single electrons. Intel said each qubit measures about 50 by 50 nanometers, up to a million times smaller than other kinds.

Tunnel Falls went to research labs, including Sandia National Laboratories and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, so they could run experiments without building their own devices. In May 2024 Intel reported 99.9% gate fidelity, a measure of how often a qubit’s basic operations come out right, in a paper published in Nature.

Other makers describe their machines in other units, so the numbers do not line up. Google’s Willow chip, announced in December 2024, has 105 physical qubits, the individual devices on the chip. IBM plans a machine called Starling by 2029 with 200 logical qubits, each built from many physical qubits working together to catch errors. One is a chip that exists and the other a target, and neither says where Intel stands against them.

Show the data

Date	Event
2015	Intel says its investment in quantum computing began in 2015.
Dec 2020	Intel introduces Horse Ridge II, a chip that controls quantum systems at very low temperatures.
Oct 2022	Intel reports a manufacturing milestone for silicon quantum devices.
Feb 2023	Intel releases Quantum SDK 1.0, a software toolkit for simulating quantum computers.
Jun 2023	Intel releases Tunnel Falls, a silicon research chip with 12 qubits, to research labs.
May 2024	Intel reports 99.9% gate fidelity on qubits made on its 300-millimeter wafers, in a paper in Nature.
Oct 2026	Intel agrees to buy Classiq, with the close expected in the first half of 2027.

The Tunnel Falls release said a next chip was “expected to be released in 2024.” No Intel release in StockTitan’s data has announced it, and the May 2024 paper was Intel’s last quantum press release in StockTitan’s news archive until today.

Intel’s reports to shareholders say even less. We searched the six annual reports Intel filed for fiscal 2020 through 2025 for the word “quantum”. It appears twice, both times in one 2022 sentence about encryption, and never about Intel’s own quantum chips. The annual report, filed with the SEC as a Form 10-K, is the company’s main yearly account to shareholders, and the 2025 one has no quantum section. This shows what the reports emphasize. It does not show that Intel set quantum aside, since its releases show the lab work went on into 2024 and today’s deal adds to it.

Will Classiq still work with IBM, IonQ and Nvidia?

The release says that after closing Intel “intends to continue to support Classiq’s existing multi-platform integrations and ensure a modality- and hardware-agnostic software solution”. Classiq’s May 2025 announcement lists direct links to machines from IBM, IonQ, QuEra, Quantinuum, OQC, AQT, Alice & Bob and Rigetti. It adds simulators from Nvidia and Intel, programs that imitate a quantum computer on ordinary chips. It also runs through Amazon’s, Microsoft’s and Google’s clouds.

Show the data

1. Intel to Classiq quantum software: Buying it.
2. AMD Ventures to Classiq quantum software: Invested, Nov 2025.
3. Qualcomm Ventures to Classiq quantum software: Invested, Nov 2025.
4. IonQ to Classiq quantum software: Invested, Nov 2025.
5. Classiq quantum software to IBM and IonQ quantum computers: Runs on.
6. Classiq quantum software to Quantinuum and Rigetti computers: Runs on.
7. Classiq quantum software to NVIDIA and Intel simulators: Runs on.

Three of its investors are chip or quantum companies. AMD’s venture arm, Qualcomm’s venture arm and IonQ joined Classiq’s November 2025 funding round. In February 2026 Classiq, Comcast and AMD reported a trial of a quantum method for internet routing, simulated on AMD’s graphics chips. Neither Intel nor Classiq has said what those investors receive in the sale, or whether the partnerships carry on unchanged.

How much is Intel paying for Classiq?

The deal still needs regulatory approvals and other routine conditions, and Intel expects it to close in the first half of 2027. Until then the two companies run separately. Intel has not disclosed the price or whether it will pay in cash, shares or both.

Has Intel’s CEO invested in Classiq?

Classiq’s February 2022 release on its $33 million round says it “included personal investments from Lip-Bu Tan and Harvey Jones”. It describes Tan as executive chairman and former chief executive of Cadence Design Systems, a maker of chip design software. The same release says “Cadence and Synopsys do for electronic design what Classiq does for quantum software design”, the comparison Intel’s release makes today.

Intel’s 2026 proxy statement is the document it sends shareholders before its annual meeting. It says the audit committee, a group of board members, reviews deals above $120,000 in which a director or executive “has a direct or indirect material interest”. Executives must also tell the company of any possible conflict. Neither the release nor any Intel filing we found says whether Tan still holds Classiq shares or how this deal was reviewed.

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