TLDR: A recent report by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) and data from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) reveal that China has significantly led the world in generative artificial intelligence (AI) patent filings between 2014 and 2023. With over 38,210 patents, China’s filings are more than six times higher than those of the United States, which recorded 6,276 patents during the same period. This dominance is attributed to China’s focus on practical, efficiency-driven AI applications across various industries.
GENEVA – China has emerged as the undisputed global leader in generative artificial intelligence (AI) patent filings from 2014 to 2023, according to a recent assessment by an AI expert following the release of the International Institute for Management Development (IMD)’s AI Maturity Index. Data from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) further corroborates this, indicating that China-based inventors filed over 38,210 generative AI patents in this period, a figure substantially higher than the United States’ 6,276 patents. This places China’s patent output at approximately 70% of the more than 50,000 generative AI patents filed globally over the last decade.
Michael Wade, Professor of Strategy and Digital at IMD and Director of the TONOMUS Global Center for Digital and AI Transformation, highlighted China’s strategic approach. ‘China is less concerned about building the most powerful AI capabilities, and more focused on bringing AI to market with an efficiency-driven and low-cost approach,’ Wade stated in a virtual interview. This strategy has fostered a strong foundation for growth and value creation, particularly in practical applications within manufacturing, healthcare, and autonomous vehicles.
Despite export controls limiting China’s access to advanced computing chips crucial for AI development, the nation’s patenting prowess remains robust. The IMD’s second edition of the AI Maturity Index, which evaluates how effectively companies adopt AI to transform business strategies, ranked NVIDIA at the top, followed by Microsoft and Alphabet. Among the 300 top companies assessed, Chinese firms constituted the second-largest national contingent after the United States.
Within China, the technology and insurance sectors demonstrate the strongest AI maturity, with companies like China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, and NTT investing billions in AI-ready data centers and hyperscale computing capacity. Conversely, traditional state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in energy and construction currently exhibit the lowest AI maturity.
Globally, the WIPO Patent Landscape Report on Generative AI documented 54,000 GenAI inventions in the decade through 2023, with over 25% emerging in the last year alone. The top ten GenAI patent applicants include Tencent (2,074 inventions), Ping An Insurance (1,564), Baidu (1,234), Chinese Academy of Sciences (607), IBM (601), Alibaba Group (571), Samsung Electronics (468), Alphabet (443), ByteDance (418), and Microsoft (377). The leading five inventor locations are China, the US, the Republic of Korea (4,155), Japan (3,409), and India (1,350), with India showing the highest average annual growth rate among these leaders at 56%.
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This aggressive patent strategy by China underscores its ambition to achieve global AI superpower status by 2030, reflecting a centralized government policy that prioritizes AI research and development through incentives and subsidies for patent filings.
