# China Leads AI Patent Grants as GenAI Family Publications Nearly Double

By Simon Yoon

Canonical URL: https://www.tokenpost.com/news/technology/39514
Published: 2026-10-24T01:38:56.000Z
Updated: 2026-10-24T01:38:56.000Z
Section: Technology

> Worldwide AI grants reached 131,121 in 2024, while published generative AI patent families climbed to 37,808 in 2025 from 18,862 a year earlier.

China accounted for nearly three-quarters of global artificial intelligence patent grants in 2024, while U.S. patents represented most forward citations, highlighting different measures of influence in a fast-growing field.

Worldwide AI grants totaled 131,121 in 2024, up 8.2% from 2023 and far above the 3,866 recorded in 2010. China held 74.2% of the 2024 total, compared with 12.1% for the United States.

A separate measure focused on generative AI (GenAI) counted 37,808 published patent families in 2025, roughly twice the 18,862 published in 2024. The two series cover different things: one counts grants across AI broadly, while the other tracks published families for GenAI. More than 56,000 GenAI families appeared in 2024 and 2025 combined, exceeding the total for 2014 through 2023.

The country rankings shift when adjusted for population. South Korea had 14.31 AI patent grants per 100,000 inhabitants in 2024. China recorded 6.95 per 100,000 and the United States 4.68.

Citation figures show another contrast. U.S. patents made up 51.91% of forward citations for AI patents granted from 2010 through 2024, compared with 29.81% for China. Forward citations count later patents that refer to earlier ones, but they offer only an imperfect indication of influence and can favor patents from the same country.

GenAI family publications tied to China-based inventors exceeded 43,000 across 2024 and 2025. Japan's count increased from 398 in 2023 to 3,835 in 2025, a 210% compound annual growth rate. The U.S. count rose from about 1,185 to more than 4,380 over that span, a 92% annualized rate.

SoftBank had the most published GenAI patent families among the listed owners, with 2,985 across 2014 through 2025. Nearly all of those families were published in 2025 after being filed in 2023. Alphabet (Google) had 1,083, Microsoft had 865 and IBM had 821.

The 2025 totals included 14,100 published families involving large language models and 5,200 involving generative adversarial networks. GenAI represented about 8.7% of more than 435,000 published AI patent families that year. Patent publication typically follows filing by about 18 months, so the 2025 publication total does not indicate when those applications were filed.