Tsinghua University has surpassed the combined total of AI and machine learning patents held by MIT, Stanford, Princeton, and Harvard, according to data from LexisNexis. Between 2005 and the end of 2024, Tsinghua collected 4,986 patents, with over 900 alone in 2024. This marks a significant shift in global AI innovation, as China now accounts for more than half of all active patent families in the field.
Despite this, U.S. institutions still dominate in the most influential AI patents and top-performing models, with American universities producing 40 major AI models in 2024 compared to 15 from Chinese organizations. The rapid growth of China’s AI research is also reflected in the increasing share of top AI researchers, with China’s proportion of the world’s top 2% rising from 10% in 2019 to 26% by 2022, while the U.S. share has declined from 35% to 28% during the same period.