Quantum Annealing Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
- Filing peaked in 2022 at 11 families and has not been exceeded since — this is a flat-to-declining filing curve, not a growth story.
- The most-cited record dates to 2015 US20150317558A1 on quantum-assisted neural network training carries 171 citations, far ahead of anything filed since.
- United States dominates the filing venue 56 of 89 records were filed there, with Europe, WIPO and Canada trailing well behind and China at a single filing.
A small, concentrated field built on a handful of foundational filings
Quantum annealing patenting is a compact field: 89 patent families since 2015, filed almost entirely through the United States receiving office. The core IPC class is G06N (AI-model computing), present in every record, with a substantial secondary cluster in G06F general-purpose digital processing — a signature of claims that pair a physical annealing processor with classical pre- and post-processing software. Smaller pockets sit in control systems (G05B), nanofabrication (B82Y) and analogue computing (G06G), reflecting the hardware side of the field: flux qubits, calibration circuits and cryogenic control.
The citation record is old relative to the filing window: the five most-cited documents all date to the 2011-2015 period, and the highest-cited, on quantum-assisted training of neural networks, has not been matched by anything filed since. That pattern is consistent with an early platform-defining wave followed by a narrower stream of refinement filings — co-assignee activity is thin, with only three recorded pairs, all centred on the same early hardware group.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 89-family dataset: how filing activity has moved year over year, and how it splits across IPC subclasses.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Annual filings rose from 5 in 2017 to a peak of 11 in 2022, then eased back; 2026 is a partial year at the data cut-off and will fill in as later filings publish, consistent with the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication. Read the last one to two years of any trend line as a floor, not a ceiling.
IPC subclass composition
Every record carries a G06N classification, and 38 of 89 also carry G06F — the field is dominated by hybrid quantum-classical processing claims rather than pure physics claims. Hardware-adjacent subclasses (G05B, B82Y, G06G, H03K) each account for single-digit counts, marking smaller, more specialised filing pockets.
Shares are the percentage of the 89 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Quantum Annealing Technology Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about quantum annealing technology landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited foundational filings
System and method for obtaining random numbers using quantum annealer and related methods
A quantum annealing device applies magnetic-field operators across a set of qubits, reads the resulting state after evolution, and applies error mitigation to output random numbers. The claims tie the input module, annealing device, read-out module and error mitigation module into a single random-number-generation pipeline.Filed by Multiverse Computing SL, published 2025-06-26 — one of the more recent records in the corpus, illustrating a newer application (random number generation) layered on established annealing hardware concepts.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20150317558A1 | Quantum-assisted training of neural networks | 171 |
| 2 | US20150111754A1 | Universal adiabatic quantum computing with superconducting qubits | 111 |
| 3 | US20120254586A1 | Quantum and digital processor hybrid systems and methods to solve problems | 109 |
| 4 | US20110060780A1 | Systems, methods, and apparatus for calibrating, controlling, and operating a quantum processor | 94 |
| 5 | US20110060710A1 | Quantum and digital processor hybrid systems and methods to solve problems | 88 |
| 6 | US20090299947A1 | Systems, methods and apparatus for adiabatic quantum computation and quantum annealing | 75 |
| 7 | US8175995B2 | Quantum and digital processor hybrid systems and methods to solve problems | 71 |
| 8 | US8229863B2 | Method and apparatus for evolving a quantum system using a mixed initial hamiltonian comprising both diagonal… | 65 |
| 9 | US7788192B2 | Method for adiabatic quantum computing comprising of Hamiltonian scaling | 58 |
| 10 | WO2009143166A2 | Systems, methods, and apparatus for calibrating, controlling, and operating a quantum processor | 53 |
Citation counts are measured within this searched corpus and skew toward older filings; treat them as a signal of influence on later work, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →What the numbers say about the field's trajectory
Three read-throughs from the filing trend, the citation pattern and the venue split.
Growth has flattened, not accelerated
Filings rose from 5 in 2017 to a peak of 11 in 2022 and have not exceeded that level since. Recent-year momentum across the tracked assignees shows 0 filings in the latest year for every one of them, including the field's most active names.
Influence sits with the earliest filings
The most-cited document, on quantum-assisted neural network training, was published in 2015 and leads the field by a wide margin over the next four most-cited records, all from 2011-2015. No later filing has approached that citation density.
The US is the dominant filing venue by a wide margin
Europe (12), WIPO/PCT (10) and Canada (6) trail well behind the US total, and China shows a single filing. That skew suggests most applicants have treated the US as the primary market to protect, with only selective international filing.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to quantum annealing technology landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
A concentrated field with a thin collaboration layer
Co-assignee activity is limited to three recorded pairs, all anchored on the same early hardware group, and recent-year filing momentum has gone flat across every tracked assignee.
Collaboration is rare and concentrated
The strongest co-filing pairs all involve the same core hardware assignee working with named individual inventors, rather than joint filings between separate companies. That points to internal inventor teams rather than cross-company R&D partnerships.
Every leading assignee shows zero recent filings
The assignees with the deepest filing histories in this corpus, including the field's earliest hardware developer, its later entrants in optimization software, and more recent additions, all register zero filings in the most recent tracked year.
US-first filing strategy dominates
With Europe, WIPO, Canada, Austria and China together accounting for the remaining third of filings, most applicants appear to prioritise US protection before, or instead of, broader international coverage.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| D-Wave Systems | 0 | — |
| Lockheed Martin | 0 | — |
| 1QB Information Technologies (1QBit) | 0 | — |
| Raytheon BBN Technologies | 0 | — |
| QUANTUM COMPUTING INC | 0 | -100% |
| KIPU QUANTUM GMBH | 0 | — |
| GLADIOLUS VERITATIS CONSULTING CO | 0 | — |
| Multiverse Computing | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a field with a settled core and a few open edges worth checking against your own portfolio.
Map your claims against the G06F overlap
38 of 89 families combine annealing hardware claims with general digital-processing claims. If your work sits at that hybrid boundary, checking claim scope there is more informative than checking G06N alone.
Explore the IPC breakdownTrack the assignees showing zero recent activity
Every tracked assignee shows zero filings in the latest year. Confirm whether that reflects publication lag or an actual pause before assuming the space has gone quiet.
Review assignee momentumCheck the under-claimed branches
Read-out error mitigation, quantum random number generation and problem-embedding for bioinformatics all show thin filing density relative to the core hardware claims.
See the white space chipsCommon questions about quantum annealing patents
The most-cited records in this corpus, including the two highest-cited documents on hybrid quantum-digital processing and quantum processor calibration, date to the 2011-2015 period and originate from the field's earliest commercial hardware developer. These early filings define much of the vocabulary and processor architecture that later applicants build on. Newer entrants, including software-focused optimization firms and more recent hardware-adjacent applicants, have filed narrower refinement patents rather than displacing this foundational base.
No, not based on this dataset. Filings rose from 5 in 2017 to a peak of 11 in 2022 and have not exceeded that level since, and every tracked assignee shows zero filings in the most recent year. Some of that recent flatness is expected because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the newest one to two years will fill in somewhat, but the plateau clearly predates the most recent partial year.
The United States dominates by a wide margin, accounting for 56 of the 89 records in this corpus. Europe via the EPO and international PCT filings each account for around a tenth of the total, Canada for a smaller share, and China for a single filing. This concentration suggests most applicants treat the US as their primary protection market and file more selectively elsewhere.
Every record in this corpus carries a G06N classification for AI-model computing, and 38 of the 89 also carry G06F for general digital data processing, showing that most claims combine a physical annealing processor with classical software for pre-processing, embedding or post-processing results. Smaller but notable overlaps exist with control systems (G05B), nanotechnology fabrication (B82Y), analogue computing (G06G) and, in a handful of cases, bioinformatics (G16B).
The clearest gaps sit in branches with low filing density relative to the dense core annealing-hardware claims: error mitigation specific to annealer read-out, quantum random number generation built on annealing hardware, and problem-embedding methods tailored to bioinformatics applications. These areas show only a handful of filings each against a much larger hardware-claim base, which typically signals room for a first-mover claim rather than an already-crowded space.
Research Quantum Annealing Technology Landscape in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole quantum annealing technology landscape corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.