Data · Who is filing on what, edition 1
Big-company AI patent publications rose sharply this summer, and the usual AI class misses 44% of them
Published U.S. applications from eight of the largest AI companies, July 16 to October 8, 2026, compared with the same weeks of 2025.
The short version
Alphabet published 350 AI-related patent applications in the 13 weekly publication dates ending October 8, 2026, up from 221 in the same weeks of 2025. Nvidia went from 128 to 226. Microsoft rose more slowly, from 193 to 213. OpenAI went from 10 to 24, from a small base.
The market as a whole
Publications classified in G06N, the classification most people mean by “AI patents,” rose from 3,868 to 6,017 over the same weeks, an increase of 56%. All published utility applications rose 28%, from 90,195 to 115,085, so G06N’s share of everything published rose from 4.3% to 5.2%.
Agents have arrived in the titles
Across the eight companies, AI-related applications whose titles name an agent or an agentic system rose from 14 to 47. Alphabet went from 3 to 17, Microsoft from 2 to 16 and Nvidia from 1 to 10. The median gap between effective filing date and publication for these 47 was 18 months, so most were filed in early 2025.
Why counting G06N alone undercounts
Many of these filings are not in G06N at all. They are classified under natural language processing (G06F 40), computer vision (G06V) or speech (G10L) instead. Across the seven companies with at least 20 AI-related publications, G06N missed 419 of 949, or 44%. The gap runs from 37% for Alphabet to 71% for Meta and 77% for Apple.
What it means for in-house counsel
A landscape, freedom-to-operate or competitor-monitoring search that relies on G06N alone will miss a large share of the relevant art, and for some companies most of it. Add G06F 40, G06V and G10L, and search titles and claims for model and agent terms.
Method
Data: USPTO Open Data Portal, patent application records, retrieved October 13, 2026. The windows are the 13 weekly publication dates from July 16 to October 8, 2026, and from July 17 to October 9, 2025.
A publication counts as AI-related if it carries a CPC code in G06N, G06F 40, G06V, or G10L 13, 15 or 25, or if its title uses an AI term such as “machine learning,” “neural network,” “language model” or “generative.”
Companies are counted by first-named applicant only, with name variants combined. Alphabet includes Google LLC, GDM Holding LLC and DeepMind Technologies Limited. Agent counts exclude one chemistry application whose title refers to nucleating agents.
Small counts, such as Anthropic’s 7 in 2025 and 1 in 2026, swing widely from period to period and are not a trend.
Source: USPTO Open Data Portal
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Burbage Law is the practice of Jon Burbage, a registered patent attorney. 342 United States patents have issued from applications he wrote; the full list is on the Patents page. More about Jon Burbage.
These figures are computed from public USPTO records as described above. They are general information, not legal advice, and do not create an attorney-client relationship.