Who Leads the AI Patent Race?

A year ago, China made its first apperance in the top 10 of the Global Innovation Index, an annual report released by the World Intellectual Property Organization - a position it it has managed to maintain in the latest edition of the report. This is due in no small part to the country's thriving AI industry. Data from Stanford University underscores just how strong the country’s technology sector has become. In 2024 - the latest available date - China claimed a whopping 74 percent of the worlds granted AI patents. The United States' share, by contrast, has droped to no more than 12 percent. And the Statista chart shows that the world’s largest economy fell behind the only other AI superpower not just recently, but as early as 2017. Other countries or regions struggle to keep up. For example, Europe’s share of all granted AI patents is only 3 percent.