SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS, France, May 27, 2026 │ KnowMade has released its new interactive patent intelligence dashboard, Si Photonics & Photonic IC Patent Landscape 2026, designed to help stakeholders in semiconductors, optical communications, and AI infrastructure better understand the evolving global intellectual property (IP) landscape of silicon photonics (SiPh) and photonic integrated circuits (PIC).
The interactive dashboard is designed to support semiconductor companies, optical communication players, AI infrastructure providers, foundries, OSATs, materials suppliers, R&D organizations, and investors in tracking technology developments, benchmarking competitors, and identifying emerging innovation opportunities across the photonic IC and silicon photonics ecosystem.
The solution combines an interactive online dashboard with a structured patent database, enabling users to dynamically explore patent activity, analyze competitive positioning, and access patent-level intelligence across key technology and material segments.
The dashboard covers global patenting trends, including the evolution of patent publications over time, countries of patent filings, and major filing dynamics. It also identifies leading patent assignees and IP newcomers, categorized by geographical area and value-chain positioning.
Patents are segmented across several strategic technology areas, including:
- PIC / SiPh Platforms
- Active Devices
- Optical Coupling
- Optical Transceivers
- Optical I/O & Interconnects
- Packaging & Testing
- Photonic Computing
- Photonic Sensing
The dashboard also tracks key material platforms associated with integrated photonics applications, including:
- Si & SOI
- InP
- SiN
- TFLN & LNOI
- Polymer on Insulator
- BTO
For each technology and material segment, users can analyze IP dynamics, benchmark major patent assignees, identify IP newcomers, monitor key players, and access full text of strategic patents.
The associated Excel database includes all patents analyzed in the study, together with patent segmentation data and hyperlinks to updated online patent databases for direct access to original documents and legal status information.
Si Photonics and Photonic IC Technologies Continue to Accelerate
Silicon photonics (SiPh) and photonic integrated circuits (PIC) are increasingly positioned at the core of next-generation optical communications, datacenter interconnects, AI infrastructure, and advanced sensing systems.
By integrating optical functionalities such as waveguides, modulators, photodetectors, filters, resonators, couplers, light-source interfaces, and optical I/O structures onto chip-scale platforms, PIC and SiPh technologies are enabling new levels of bandwidth density, power efficiency, and system integration.
The interactive dashboard and database cover more than 36,400 patent publications grouped into over 13,300 patent families.
Patent publication activity has shown strong acceleration since the mid-2010s, reaching more than 1,700 patent families and 4,500 individual patent publications in 2025.
Although the 2026 dataset remains incomplete because the patent search was performed in April 2026, current publication levels already indicate that patenting activity is expected to continue growing steadily throughout the year and could exceed 2,000 patent families.
This acceleration reflects the increasing industrial adoption of silicon photonics in optical transceivers, coherent optics, and datacenter communications, as well as the rapid emergence of optical I/O, co-packaged optics (CPO), photonic interconnects, optical chiplets, and 3D photonic integration.
As AI and high-performance computing (HPC) systems continue to face increasing bandwidth, latency, and power-consumption constraints, these technologies are becoming increasingly strategic.
Figure 1: Time evolution of patent publications related to Si Photonics & Photonic IC until April 2026.
Global Patent Publication Distribution Highlights Strong Activity in the United States, China, and Europe
The dashboard also highlights the global distribution of patent publications in silicon photonics and photonic IC, reflecting the increasingly international nature of competition in the sector.
The United States leads with more than 12,200 patent publications, supported by strong activity from semiconductor companies, hyperscalers, and silicon photonics innovators. China follows with over 6,100 patent publications, reflecting rapid investments in AI infrastructure, optical interconnects, and advanced semiconductor technologies.
Europe remains another major innovation hub with more than 5,300 patent publications, while Japan and Korea continue to demonstrate strong expertise in optoelectronics, materials, and semiconductor manufacturing.
The dashboard also reveals growing patent activity across Canada, India, Israel, and several emerging photonics ecosystems, highlighting the strategic importance of silicon photonics for AI datacenters, HPC systems, optical computing, and next-generation interconnect architectures.
Figure 2: Global patent publication distribution for silicon photonics and photonic IC technologies
A Highly Diversified Competitive IP Landscape
The silicon photonics and photonic IC ecosystem is characterized by a highly diversified competitive IP landscape involving semiconductor manufacturers, optical networking leaders, foundries, OSATs, advanced materials suppliers, R&D organizations, cloud infrastructure companies, and specialized pure players.
Leading patent applicants include Intel, Nokia, TSMC, Cisco, Huawei, Samsung, NTT, GlobalFoundries, HP, Rockley Photonics, Corning, Marvell, ASE Global, IBM, Meta, Fujitsu, OpenLight Photonics, Sumitomo Electric, Alphabet, Ciena, Ericsson, Lightmatter, Apple, Oracle, NVIDIA, Shanghai Xizhi Technology, STMicroelectronics, Ayar Labs, Hisense, Honeywell, Renesas Electronics, Bosch, Kyocera, Innolight Technology, Mitsubishi Electric, Carl Zeiss, Sony, AMD, Broadcom, Fujikura, Volkswagen, Panasonic, Toshiba, Accelink Technologies, Lockheed Martin, China Electronics Technology (CETC), Hitachi, AT&T, ASML, Celestial AI, Texas Instruments, Canon, Micron, Ranovus, Thales, UMC, Ajinomoto, Unimicron, Applied Materials, and Furukawa Electric, among others.
This diversity confirms that Si photonics and photonic IC technologies are no longer limited to traditional optical communication markets, but are now becoming strategic enabling technologies for AI datacenters, advanced semiconductor packaging, high-bandwidth interconnects, and future computing architectures.
Figure 3: IP leadership of main patent assignees for Si Photonics & Photonic IC.
The dashboard highlights strong patenting activity in optical I/O, co-packaged optics, photonic interconnects, optical chiplets, photonic computing, and advanced packaging technologies.
KnowMade notes that future IP leadership in SiPh & PIC will increasingly depend not only on patent portfolio size, but also on companies’ ability to scale photonic integration through advanced packaging, optical I/O architectures, photonic chiplets, and 3D integration technologies.
Applications related to AI cluster communications, datacenter interconnects, optical switching, and high-bandwidth low-power connectivity are among the most active innovation areas.
Specialized players such as Rockley Photonics and OpenLight Photonics continue to play an important role in integrated photonic platforms, optical engines, sensing technologies, active devices, and heterogeneous integration.
Interactive Dashboard Enables Dynamic Patent Intelligence Analysis
KnowMade states that the new online interactive dashboard was designed to make patent landscape analysis more accessible, actionable, and aligned with the needs of R&D, IP, strategy, and business development teams.
Users can:
- Dynamically explore the evolving competitive IP landscape
- Access interactive visualizations for rapid insights
- Filter and analyze data by players, technologies, countries, dates, and legal status
- Focus on key technology developments
- Drill down instantly from high-level trends to patent-level records
The accompanying structured Excel database provides:
- Patent numbers
- Filing dates
- Patent assignees
- Titles and abstracts
- Legal status information
- Technology segmentation
- Material segmentation
- Hyperlinks to online patent databases
Together, the dashboard and database provide a comprehensive patent intelligence solution combining extensive patent data access with advanced analytical capabilities.
For more information, visit the dedicated web page: Si Photonics & Photonic IC Patent Landscape 2026.
Press contact
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About KnowMade
KnowMade is a technology intelligence and IP strategy firm specializing in the analysis of patents and scientific publications. We assist innovative companies, investors, and research organizations in understanding the competitive landscape, anticipating technological trends, identifying opportunities and risks, improving their R&D, and shaping effective IP strategies.
KnowMade’s analysts combine their strong technology expertise and in-depth knowledge of patents with powerful analytics tools and methodologies to transform patent and scientific data into actionable insights to support decision-making in R&D, innovation, investment, and intellectual property.
KnowMade has solid expertise in Semiconductors and Packaging, Power Electronics, Batteries and Energy Management, RF and Wireless Communications, Photonics, MEMS, Sensing and Imaging, Medical Devices, Biotechnology, Pharmaceuticals, and Agri-Food.