IBM is outdueling Google and Microsoft on lucrative Gen AI technologies.
Spurred by popular chatbot products like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, the global generative AI market should reach $1.3 trillion by 2032 (it stands at $66.6 billion in 2024), according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
“The world is poised to see an explosion of growth in the generative AI sector over the next ten years that promises to fundamentally change the way the technology sector operates,” said Mandeep Singh, senior technology analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “The technology is set to become an increasingly essential part of IT spending, ad spending, and cybersecurity as it develops.”
While big brand technology companies are vying for GenAI market leadership, Bloomberg noted the dynamic landscape should continue to change.
“This technology will not be a solely positive development for all players in the space, as this rapid growth opportunity for generative AI across technology may displace several incumbents set to benefit from generative AI,” the report stated. “That includes semiconductors, hardware, cloud software, IT services, and ad companies.”
One company that is thriving in the Gen AI market is IBM, which owns 1,500 GenAI patents in 2023, according to a new study titled IFI Insights: Opening the Patent Picture on Generative AI” by IFI Claims Patent Service, a New Haven, Conn.-based patent application company.
That’s about one-third more than second-place Google and double the GenAI patents from Microsoft. Overall, GenAI patents comprise about 22% of all artificial intelligence patents, which number approximately 500,000 over the past half-decade, the IFI study reported.
“Although generative AI seems so new to the world, the patent filings show us that the technologies around this form of AI have been developing for a while,” said Ronald Kratz, CEO of IFI CLAIMS Patent Services. “With any powerful, emerging technology, patents are a strong indicator of which companies will dominate the space down the road,” said Kratz. “Investors should take note of the corporations protecting inventions in promising new areas.”
The nature of those patents might raise some eyebrows, too, as the IFI report studied the type of GenAI products coming out of the patent pipeline.
The Need for Power
“Many companies are focusing on a class of research termed ‘computing arrangements based on biological models’ where huge computing power is required, while others such as IBM, Google, and Samsung focus on all four types of GenAI outputs: video, text, speech, and images,” the study noted. “However, others such as Nvidia have a narrower focus (video and images), or only have patents in one area such as Apple (speech).”
Also surprising is the relative number of patents from GenAI kingpin Open AI, which has only filed five patent applications. Joining IBM and Google in the Gen AI patent ranking are Samsung, Adobe, and Intel, IFI reported.
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