The post-ChatGPT filing wave in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has fully landed in the published record.

The 2026 patent trends update from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) reports more than 56,000 new GenAI patent families published in 2024 and 2025 alone, exceeding the entire output of the preceding decade (2014–2023). Annual publications nearly doubled in one year, from 18,862 in 2024 to 37,808 in 2025, against roughly 14,000 in 2023. GenAI now accounts for 8.7% of all AI patent family publications, up from 6.1% in 2023.

The 18-month filing-to-publication lag explains the timing: the research and development response to ChatGPT's November 2022 launch was filed largely in 2023 and only recently published.

Ownership Has Reordered

SoftBank is the largest GenAI patent owner at 2,985 families, virtually all filed in 2023 and published in 2025. WIPO frames it as a new type of filer: a telecom and investment conglomerate integrating vertically across infrastructure, models and applications. SoftBank's portfolio also drives Japan's 210% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), which WIPO notes would otherwise be far more modest.

Alphabet leads U.S. owners at 1,083 families, then Microsoft and IBM. Nvidia enters the top 25 at 497, reflecting its expansion beyond graphics hardware into software.

OpenAI held just 35 patent filings globally as of late 2025. WIPO suggests this could be due to continued reliance on trade secrets and execution speed.

Geography Is Broadening

China-based inventors published over 43,000 families in 2024–2025 alone, at a 64% CAGR. Growth is faster elsewhere: United States 92%, Canada 109%, Germany 85%. Seven of the top ten inventor locations out-published their entire prior decade in two years.

LLMs Overtake GANs

Large language model (LLM) families exceeded 14,100 in 2025 against 5,245 for generative adversarial networks (GANs), with diffusion models now third. Early agentic-AI filings are visible, with Alphabet and Nvidia among first movers.

Three Implications for Practitioners

  1. The prior art problem is worse than the counts suggest. Filings from 2025 and 2026 will not publish until 2027.
  2. International patent families were only about 9% of 2025 GenAI publications. Most of that landscape is domestic and Chinese-language — hard to surface in routine searching, and likely to broaden as portfolios mature.
  3. GenAI patenting is no longer a technology-industry story. State Grid and Bosch sit in the top 25. Utilities, industrials and infrastructure providers need deliberate patent strategy.

The decisive applications are already on file and unpublished. Positions are being staked today against prior art that will remain unavailable until 2027 or later.

Read the report: WIPO, Patent Trends Update in GenAI, Technology SPARK Report Series (2026), Pub. No. 1089.3/26. DOI: 10.34667/tind.60252 — https://www.wipo.int/publications/en/details.jsp?id=4862