Sparse and Quantized Kernel Patents: Leaders & Filing Trends 2026
Sparse and Quantized Kernel Support Patents
One assignee dominates the ranked field. the leader holds 279 records against a fifth-place count of just 2, a gap wide enough that most of the ranked 30 companies appear as single-digit or single-filing entrants. Filings started from zero in 2017, rose to a peak of 91 records in 2022, and on the last complete comparison window grew from 24 records in 2021 to 32 in 2024 — a +33% increase. Treat 2025 and 2026 as still filling in rather than declining.
- 1INTEL CORP279
- 2NORTHEASTERN UNIV (US)4
- 3COLLEGE OF WILLIAM & MARY4
- 4NVIDIA CORP3
- 5ATOMBEAM TECH INC2
See the full sparse and quantized kernel support 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 holds the most patents in sparse and quantized kernel support?
One assignee holds 279 of the records in the ranked list of 30 companies, a lead so large that the fifth-place entity holds only 2 and the tenth-place entity holds 1. This means the field is not a competitive cluster of comparable filers; it is one dominant portfolio holder surrounded by a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants, including universities and individual inventors. Anyone assessing competitive risk in this space should treat that leader’s portfolio as the primary clearance target rather than spreading diligence evenly across the ranked list.
Is patent filing in this space growing or slowing down?
On the complete-year data, filings grew from 24 in 2021 to 32 in 2024, a +33% increase, after peaking at 91 records in the single year 2022. The apparent lower counts in 2025 and 2026 reflect the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication, not an actual drop in filing activity. Any statement that the field is cooling based on the last one to two years of this dataset would be premature.
What technology areas does sparse and quantized kernel support actually cover?
The core of the field, by IPC classification, sits in G06F (electric digital data processing, 64.3% of the 291 records) and G06T (image data processing and generation, 52.9%), with a smaller but meaningful presence in G06N (AI-model computing, 13.4%). Smaller classes such as H03M (coding and code conversion), A63F (games and amusements) and G06V (image/video recognition) each cover under 3% of records, pointing to specific niches — coding-layer metadata handling, graphics-adjacent sparse formats, recognition-pipeline quantization — that are far less crowded than the general-compute core.
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 Sparse and Quantized Kernel Support 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.