Direct Air Capture Energy Integration Patents: Leaders & Filing Trends 2026
Direct Air Capture Energy Integration Patents: Who Holds the Thermal Claim Space
306 of 732 records (41.8%) sit with five assignees, so most of the field's thermal-integration claim space is already staked by a small top tier. Filings ran at 82 in 2017, the peak year on record, and by 2021 had settled to 54. From there the 2021→2024 span shows a 76% decline to 13 filings in 2024, the last year the dataset treats as complete. Read the 2025-2026 tail as incomplete rather than as a continuation of that decline — publication lag alone accounts for much of the drop-off in the newest years.
- 1MALTA INC156
- 2LIGHTSAIL ENERGY INC65
- 3LUMMUS TECHNOLOGY INC31
- 4OASYS WATER INC29
- 58 RIVERS CAPITAL LLC25
See the full direct air capture energy integration analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions about this landscape
Who are the leading patent holders in direct air capture energy integration?
The assignee ranking in this dataset covers 100 companies, with a single leader holding 156 of the 732 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-ranked assignee at 25 and the tenth-ranked at 15. The top five combined account for 41.8% of all records, and the top ten for 54.4%, so the field has a clear leading tier followed by a long tail of smaller filers. This concentration matters for freedom-to-operate work because a large share of the core claim space sits with a small number of parties.
Is patent filing activity in this field growing or shrinking?
Filing peaked in 2017 at 82 records and has declined since; the clearest measurable span is 2021 to 2024, where filings fell 76% from 54 to 13. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, 2025 and 2026 figures in any trend chart will look artificially low and should not be read as a further collapse. Taken together, the evidence supports describing this as a field that cooled substantially after its 2017 filing surge rather than one still accelerating.
Which technology areas get the most patent claims in this space?
Gas-turbine plant technology (IPC class F02C) and steam and thermal power plant technology (F01K) each appear in roughly a third of the 732 records, making them the dominant claim categories. Heat-exchange apparatus, turbines, separation processes, refrigeration and heat pumps, and battery or fuel-cell technology each sit between roughly 10% and 14% of records. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares add up to well over 100% and should be read as overlapping footprints, not a breakdown of the whole.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Direct Air Capture Energy Integration covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.