https://qa.coreboot.org/job/coreboot-boot-test/ sends off ToT builds to 9esec's Lava system where they are run on some virtual and real devices. See for example the comments to https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/51189 where Lava reports passing on 5 qemu configs and 3 real devices.
Right, but that's different... those tests only run on patches after they are merged (and IIRC they do get broken occasionally and I don't think many people pay attention to them. When I see those broken on one of my patches I tend to just assume there was an existing breakage in the tree already).

I understand that there may be good reasons why we can't run the real hardware tests on every patch set and make them block Verified+1. But for QEMU that shouldn't be too hard? We already build images for the emulation boards anyway, running QEMU to boot them just takes a second, and it shouldn't require anything that isn't already available on the machines that do all the compiling. Why can't we do that as part of that step already?