Serverless Computing Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 43.1% concentration. The five leading assignees account for 1,072 of the 2,489 records in scope — this field is far more concentrated at the top than its long tail of single-filing entrants suggests.
- +41% filing growth, 2021→2024. Filings rose from 295 to 417 over that span, the last three-year window publication delay lets us treat as complete.
- G06F dominates, but H04W and G06N are rising fronts. 56.8% of records touch core digital data processing, while wireless networks (15.7%) and AI-based computing (13.1%) mark where serverless claims are colliding with adjacent fields.
Filing growth compares 2021 (295 records) with 2024 (417) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 2,489 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the serverless computing patent record actually shows
Serverless computing patents in this dataset span 2,489 published records filed against a search covering function-as-a-service, event-driven computing and the runtime, scheduling and service-discovery mechanics that make those models work. The record set runs from 2015 through the data cut-off of 2026-08-31, with the most recent one to two years understated because publication typically lags filing by roughly 18 months. Family-level counting is used throughout so continuation and multi-jurisdiction filing by the largest applicants do not inflate the picture.
Filing activity climbed steadily through the early 2020s and peaked so far in 2024 at 417 records, consistent with the broader move of cloud infrastructure vendors toward event-driven and pay-per-invocation architectures. The assignee ranking and IPC composition below point to a field where the core claim space around scheduling and runtime environments is already dense, even as new fronts open around AI-integrated and wireless-adjacent serverless deployment.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 2,489-record dataset: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Filings rose from 63 in 2017 to a peak of 417 in 2024, including the +41% rise from 295 (2021) to 417 (2024). 2025 and 2026 figures (53 in 2026, partial) will revise upward as publication catches up; they should not be read as a slowdown.
IPC subclass composition
G06F (electric digital data processing) appears in 56.8% of the 2,489 records, ahead of H04L (digital information transmission) at 36.8%, H04W (wireless communication networks) at 15.7%, and G06N (AI-based computing) at 13.1%. Because records commonly carry several IPC classes, these shares add up to well over 100% and should be read individually against the full record count, not against each other.
Shares are the percentage of the 2,489 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Serverless Computing Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about serverless computing patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records in the corpus
Method, apparatus and system for supporting serverless computing in mobile network (US20260122550A1)
The application describes a serverless computing support apparatus inside a mobile network that receives compute and network metrics pre-collected from MEC server functions and mobile underlay network metrics from a network data analytics function, then uses a serverless computing aware function to determine service-instance deployment information, including the number of pre-warming serverless service instances to hold ready.Filed by Foundation of Soongsil University-Industry Cooperation, published 2026-04-30 — illustrative of how serverless claims are now being extended into mobile-core and MEC-aware deployment decisions rather than staying confined to data-centre scheduling.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20240386015A1 | Composite symbolic and non-symbolic artificial intelligence system for advanced reasoning and semantic search | 374 |
| 2 | US11570627B1 | System, method, and apparatus for providing optimized network resources | 332 |
| 3 | US20210263779A1 | Function as a service (FAAS) system enhancements | 329 |
| 4 | US20190028552A1 | Managing a distributed network of function execution environments | 294 |
| 5 | US20240048994A1 | System, method, and apparatus for providing optimized network resources | 261 |
| 6 | US20220345483A1 | Prioritizing internet-accessible workloads for cyber security | 249 |
| 7 | US20190303623A1 | Promotion smart contracts for software development processes | 241 |
| 8 | US20240412720A1 | Real-time contextually aware artificial intelligence (AI) assistant system and a method for providing a conte… | 233 |
| 9 | US20190305957A1 | Execution smart contracts configured to establish trustworthiness of code before execution | 214 |
| 10 | US20250259085A1 | Convergent Intelligence Fabric for Multi-Domain Orchestration of Distributed Agents with Hierarchical Memory … | 209 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings that have simply had more time to accumulate citations — treat this table as a signal of influence on subsequent filers, not a ranking of current technical importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Read together, the concentration, growth and classification figures point to a field with an occupied core and several less-crowded edges.
The core scheduling and runtime claims are already occupied
With the five leading assignees holding 43.1% of all records in scope and the top ten holding 53.7%, the foundational claim space around service-instance scheduling and runtime environments sits on dense prior art from a small number of filers. New entrants targeting the same mechanisms should expect crowded independent claims and should scope narrowly around implementation detail rather than the general architecture.
Momentum is real, not an artifact of one filer
Filings grew from 295 in 2021 to 417 in 2024, the last three-year span that publication lag has fully caught up on. That growth sits alongside a broad set of assignees rather than a single outlier, suggesting the underlying demand for serverless-specific claims is still expanding even as the most obvious mechanisms get claimed.
AI-adjacent serverless claims are a distinct, smaller cluster
G06N appears in 13.1% of the 2,489 records, well behind G06F's 56.8% but large enough to mark a genuine sub-field where serverless scheduling and AI model execution are being claimed together. This overlap is worth watching separately from the core data-processing cluster, since it is younger and less consolidated.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to serverless computing patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the activity is slowing
The ranked leaders show a familiar pattern for cloud infrastructure: a handful of large platform vendors sit well ahead of a long tail, and recent-year momentum among the biggest filers is already cooling relative to their own filing peaks.
A single filer holds close to twice the fifth-place total
The leading assignee's 364 records compare with 98 for the fifth-ranked filer and 39 for the tenth, a steep drop-off that confirms this is a leader-and-long-tail field rather than an evenly distributed one.
Recent-year momentum has cooled even among active filers
Several of the more active assignees show sharp year-on-year declines in their latest reported year — one top filer at -86%, others at -73% and -67% — though this likely reflects publication lag on very recent filings as much as an actual pullback in R&D.
Co-filing is limited and concentrated in a few relationships
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, the strongest linking a quantum computing firm with a university research foundation and with its own Australian subsidiary — evidence that most serverless computing patenting here is done by single entities rather than joint ventures.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| DIGITAL GLOBAL SYSTEMS INC | 19 | -86% |
| Amazon Technologies, Inc. | 3 | -73% |
| Cisco Technology, Inc. | 2 | — |
| Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. | 1 | -67% |
| Capital One Services, LLC | 1 | 0% |
| Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC | 0 | -100% |
| RIGETTI & CO INC | 0 | -100% |
| International Business Machines Corporation | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this next
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, portfolio strategy, or spotting where to file.
Check freedom-to-operate against the leading assignees
With 43.1% of records held by five filers, any new filing touching core scheduling or runtime-environment claims should be checked against those portfolios specifically, not just the field in general.
Explore assignee portfolios in EurekaTrack the AI-serverless overlap as it grows
G06N's 13.1% share is still well below the core G06F cluster, making this a smaller but faster-moving sub-field worth a standing watch rather than a one-time search.
Set up a monitoring search in EurekaDraft narrow around under-claimed mechanisms
MEC-aware pre-warming and NWDAF-driven placement, illustrated by the 2026 Soongsil University filing, show where claim language can still be specific rather than colliding with dense prior art.
Draft claims with EurekaFrequently asked questions
The dataset's assignee ranking shows one filer clearly ahead of the field, with 364 records against 98 for the fifth-ranked assignee and 39 for the tenth. The top five combined account for 43.1% of all 2,489 records in scope, and the top ten for 53.7%. That leaves a long tail of the remaining ranked assignees each holding smaller counts, which is typical for a cloud-infrastructure field dominated by a few large platform vendors.
Filing activity rose from 295 records in 2021 to 417 in 2024, a +41% increase over that span, and 2024 is the most recent year the dataset treats as complete. The lower counts shown for 2025 and especially 2026 (53 so far) reflect publication lag of roughly 18 months rather than an actual drop in filing, since recently filed applications have not all published yet. Based on the 2021-2024 trend, the underlying activity is best read as still expanding, not slowing.
Electric digital data processing (G06F) appears in 56.8% of the 2,489 records, making it the dominant classification, followed by digital information transmission (H04L) at 36.8%. Wireless communication networks (H04W) and AI-based computing (G06N) follow at 15.7% and 13.1% respectively, marking the two fastest-growing adjacent fronts. Because a single record can carry several IPC codes, these percentages are not mutually exclusive and should be read as separate overlaps rather than a breakdown that sums to 100%.
The lower-density branches sit around mobile-edge-aware service placement, cross-cloud service discovery, and AI model inference scheduling inside FaaS runtimes, all of which show up in fewer filings than the core scheduling and runtime-environment claims. A 2026 filing from Foundation of Soongsil University-Industry Cooperation illustrates one such branch, tying serverless service-instance deployment decisions to mobile network analytics functions. These areas are worth scoping claims around precisely because the foundational mechanisms are already crowded by the leading assignees.
It is concentrated at the top but has a long tail beneath it: the five leading assignees hold 43.1% of all 2,489 records, and the ten leading assignees hold 53.7%. The ranking itself covers 100 assignees, so well over 1,100 records are distributed across the remaining 90-plus filers. Practically, this means new entrants competing on the core mechanisms face dense prior art from a handful of large filers, while niche or adjacent claim areas remain more open.
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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.