HPC Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
High-Performance Computing Patents: Filing Trends and Who Holds the Claims
33.2% concentration. The five most active filers account for 14,409 of the 43,368 records in scope, a level of concentration that makes clearance searches around the leaders' filings a first, not optional, step. Annual filings rose from 893 in 2017 to a peak of 1,814 in 2022, then eased to 175 in the partial 2026 year. Treat the last one to two years as undercounted rather than as evidence of a slowdown — publication lags filing by roughly 18 months.
- 1NVIDIA CORP14.7%
- 2INTEL CORP5.9%
- 3INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINE CORPORATION5.4%
- 4PURE STORAGE INC4.4%
- 5CITRIX SYSTEMS INC2.8%
See the full high-performance computing patent landscape 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
Questions about the HPC patent landscape
Who holds the most patents in high-performance computing?
The assignee ranking in this dataset is led by a single company holding 6,370 of the 43,368 records in scope, with a steep drop to fifth place at 1,214 and tenth place at 674. The top five combined account for 33.2% of all records, so the field is concentrated at the top with a long tail of smaller filers behind it. Any competitive analysis should treat the leader’s portfolio as the first thing to map, since it covers a disproportionate share of the core claim space.
Is patent filing in high-performance computing slowing down?
Filings peaked at 1,814 in 2022 and eased to 1,405 by 2024, a 22% pull-back over that three-year span using the most recent years that can be treated as complete. That reads as a cooling from a peak rather than a collapse. The 2025 and 2026 figures in the raw trend look lower still, but publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, so those years are undercounted rather than genuinely slower.
What technology areas dominate HPC patent filings?
Electric digital data processing (IPC class G06F) is by far the largest category, touching 28.8% of the 43,368 records in scope. Digital information transmission (H04L, 7.4%), image data processing (G06T, 6.5%) and AI-based computing (G06N, 6.0%) follow at much lower density. Because records can carry multiple IPC classes, these are overlapping shares of the same record set, not slices that sum to 100%, but the gap between G06F and everything else is wide enough to show where the field’s filing weight actually sits.
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 High-Performance Computing Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. 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.