Patent Representation Gap Index
We analyzed patent inventor data for the top 100 public tech companies by market cap. The median female inventor rate is 9.1%. Only a handful of companies exceed the national average. Every company with workforce data shows a gap between who builds and who files.
The Patent Representation Gap measures the distance between a company's workforce composition and its patent inventor composition. If 25% of your technical staff are women but only 10% of your patent inventors are, that 15-point gap represents innovation going unrecognized and unprotected.
Patent data comes from the Zenodo replication dataset behind the Nature (2025) "Gender disparity in U.S. patenting" paper, covering U.S. utility patents from 1976 to 2021. Workforce data comes from official company diversity disclosures where available.
Published April 2026. This is a patent-side representation index, not a complete innovation census. See methodology section for limitations and data sources.
The Big Picture
Who Leads: Top 10 by Women on Patents
Ranked by percentage of patents that include at least one woman inventor. This measures actual patent output, not just who is in the inventor pool.
| Company | Patents | Patents w/ Women |
|---|---|---|
| JD.com | 66 | 36.4% |
| QUALCOMM | 38,243 | 26.2% |
| Uber | 874 | 25.4% |
| eBay | 3,057 | 25.1% |
| Tencent | 1,296 | 24.9% |
| Netflix | 462 | 22.9% |
| Intuit | 2,192 | 22.5% |
| Applied Materials | 13,300 | 22.1% |
| Palo Alto Networks | 2,696 | 21.8% |
| Meta (Facebook) | 9,236 | 21.7% |
The Major Tech Companies
The largest companies by market cap, sorted by percentage of patents that include women.
| Company | Patents | Patents w/ Women | Workforce Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meta | 9,236 | 21.7% | — |
| Microsoft | 52,945 | 18.9% | 17.2pt (Tier A) |
| Amazon | 20,840 | 16.8% | 24.3pt (Tier B) |
| 30,225 | 16.7% | 13.0pt (Tier A) | |
| Apple | 36,911 | 16.6% | 26.4pt (Tier C) |
| NVIDIA | 4,834 | 10.0% | — |
| Tesla | 792 | 8.5% | — |
| Samsung | 164,071 | 0.9% | — |
Workforce Gap = disclosed women-in-tech % minus patent inventor %. Tier A = tech roles disclosed. Tier B/C = broader proxy. "—" = no public data.
The Full List: All 89 Companies
Sorted by percentage of patents that include at least one woman inventor. Scroll to find your company. The "Female Inv %" column shows what share of unique inventors are women — a useful complement but not the primary ranking metric.
| Company | Patents | Patents w/ Women | Female Inv % |
|---|---|---|---|
| JD.com | 66 | 36.4% | 29.8% |
| NAURA Technology | 6 | 33.3% | 10.5% |
| QUALCOMM | 38,243 | 26.2% | 13.4% |
| Uber | 874 | 25.4% | 13.8% |
| eBay | 3,057 | 25.1% | 14.3% |
| Tencent | 1,296 | 24.9% | 16.2% |
| Netflix | 462 | 22.9% | 11.3% |
| Intuit | 2,192 | 22.5% | 15.9% |
| Applied Materials | 13,300 | 22.1% | 10.5% |
| Palo Alto Networks | 2,696 | 21.8% | 10.7% |
| Meta (Facebook) | 9,236 | 21.7% | 12.2% |
| ServiceNow | 970 | 21.2% | 15.3% |
| Airbnb | 165 | 21.2% | 20.2% |
| Salesforce | 4,078 | 20.8% | 12.9% |
| IBM | 161,875 | 19.4% | 11.6% |
| Lam Research | 3,631 | 19.3% | 9.1% |
| Microsoft | 52,945 | 18.9% | 10.0% |
| ASE Group | 1,772 | 18.3% | 20.2% |
| Equinix | 159 | 18.2% | 8.0% |
| Palantir | 1,448 | 17.7% | 11.5% |
| AMD | 12,611 | 17.2% | 9.6% |
| PayPal | 2,439 | 17.1% | 13.0% |
| Amazon | 20,840 | 16.8% | 8.5% |
| Intel | 53,347 | 16.8% | 10.2% |
| Alphabet (Google) | 30,225 | 16.7% | 10.6% |
| Apple | 36,911 | 16.6% | 8.6% |
| KLA | 2,928 | 16.5% | 8.1% |
| Booking Holdings | 55 | 16.4% | 6.1% |
| Oracle | 12,631 | 16.0% | 9.9% |
| Snowflake | 829 | 15.8% | 10.1% |
| Coinbase | 80 | 15.0% | 9.0% |
| Strategy (MicroStrategy) | 335 | 14.9% | 5.0% |
| Seagate | 8,766 | 14.9% | 7.6% |
| Broadcom | 11,189 | 14.5% | 8.1% |
| Marvell Technology | 8,758 | 14.2% | 13.6% |
| Cisco | 19,405 | 13.9% | 8.8% |
| Sandisk | 6,459 | 13.7% | 10.1% |
| Coherent Corp. | 1,104 | 12.5% | 7.1% |
| Spotify | 566 | 11.8% | 17.7% |
| ADP | 490 | 11.8% | 14.3% |
| Synopsys | 2,327 | 11.7% | 9.4% |
| DoorDash | 78 | 11.5% | 5.6% |
| Adobe | 6,431 | 11.5% | 10.3% |
| Electronic Arts | 548 | 11.1% | 9.0% |
| Cadence Design | 2,520 | 11.0% | 9.0% |
| Texas Instruments | 28,732 | 10.4% | 7.5% |
| Cloudflare | 283 | 10.2% | 6.1% |
| NVIDIA | 4,834 | 10.0% | 5.8% |
| TE Connectivity | 1,095 | 9.6% | 5.7% |
| Micron Technology | 37,368 | 9.3% | 6.6% |
| Dell | 11,422 | 8.9% | 5.9% |
| Monolithic Power | 342 | 8.8% | 8.0% |
| Arista Networks | 631 | 8.7% | 5.9% |
| Tesla | 792 | 8.5% | 4.4% |
| Ericsson | 2,516 | 8.4% | 6.1% |
| Autodesk | 1,220 | 8.3% | 9.9% |
| Roper Technologies | 117 | 7.7% | 5.7% |
| Fortinet | 861 | 6.9% | 5.9% |
| Lumentum | 310 | 6.8% | 6.0% |
| Analog Devices | 4,558 | 6.2% | 5.7% |
| Garmin | 839 | 5.8% | 4.5% |
| NXP Semiconductors | 7,360 | 5.5% | 13.4% |
| CrowdStrike | 101 | 5.0% | 3.3% |
| Keysight | 607 | 4.8% | 5.1% |
| Arm Holdings | 3,468 | 4.5% | 8.4% |
| Delta Electronics (Thai) | 73 | 4.1% | 10.3% |
| Tokyo Electron | 10,380 | 3.6% | 11.9% |
| Schneider Electric | 2,691 | 3.1% | 4.5% |
| ASML | 5,363 | 2.8% | 8.3% |
| Shopify | 208 | 2.4% | 25.0% |
| Alibaba | 2,364 | 2.4% | 12.7% |
| SAP | 9,173 | 2.3% | 16.9% |
| Sony | 75,598 | 2.1% | 9.1% |
| Nokia | 19,110 | 2.1% | 10.4% |
| Advantest | 2,293 | 1.8% | 7.3% |
| Nintendo | 2,808 | 1.5% | 7.7% |
| Infineon | 17,145 | 1.4% | 7.5% |
| Foxconn | 22,068 | 1.3% | 15.5% |
| SK Hynix | 16,433 | 1.1% | 13.8% |
| MediaTek | 5,451 | 0.9% | 6.2% |
| Samsung | 164,071 | 0.9% | 11.9% |
| TSMC | 35,659 | 0.8% | 18.3% |
| Panasonic | 33,480 | 0.4% | 7.6% |
| Delta Electronics | 3,149 | 0.3% | 7.8% |
| Xiaomi | 2,340 | 0.3% | 4.2% |
| SMIC | 1,782 | 0.2% | 25.0% |
| Disco Corp. | 1,416 | 0.1% | 8.6% |
| Murata Manufacturing | 14,369 | 0.1% | 4.1% |
| Datadog | 12 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
89 of 100 top tech companies matched. 11 had no obvious assignee match. Sorted by "Patents w/ Women %" — the share of patents that include at least one woman inventor. "Female Inv %" shows the share of unique inventors who are women. These metrics can diverge significantly. Data: Zenodo/Nature (2025), US utility patents 1976-2021.
The Workforce-to-Patent Gap
Where companies publicly disclose women in technical roles, we can calculate the gap between workforce representation and patent inventor representation. These are the most defensible comparisons, ranked by data quality.
| Company | Women in Tech Roles | Female Patent Inventors | Gap | Data Quality |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cisco | 18.0% | 8.8% | 9.2pt | Tier A |
| 23.6% | 10.6% | 13.0pt | Tier A | |
| Intel | 25.0% | 10.2% | 14.8pt | Tier A |
| Adobe | 26.2% | 10.3% | 15.9pt | Tier A |
| SAP | 34.0% | 16.9% | 17.1pt | Tier C |
| Microsoft | 27.2% | 10.0% | 17.2pt | Tier A |
| Salesforce | 30.6% | 12.9% | 17.7pt | Tier A |
| Amazon | 32.8% | 8.5% | 24.3pt | Tier B |
| Apple | 35.0% | 8.6% | 26.4pt | Tier C |
| Zillow | 49.0% | 12.9% | 36.1pt | Tier C |
Tier A: Company disclosed women specifically in technical/engineering roles. Tier B: Corporate employees (broader than patent-producing roles). Tier C: Overall workforce (weakest proxy, overstates the gap).
What This Means
The Gap Is Universal
Across 89 matched companies, the median female inventor rate is 9.1%. The national average is 12.8%. Most major tech companies fall below even the national baseline. This is not a single-company problem.
The Biggest Barrier Is Awareness
Research shows women's patents demonstrate higher novelty, originality, and technological generality. The gap is not talent or quality. It is that many engineers never learn their work contains strategic concepts worth protecting. The disclosure bottleneck happens before the lawyer is called.
It Changes What Gets Invented
Underrepresentation does not just misallocate credit. It shapes which problems get solved. Research estimates thousands of female-focused biomedical inventions never materialized due to inventor demographics. The missing innovations are real.
AI Can Help or Hurt
AI tools that scan code for strategic concepts can replace the mentorship networks most engineers never had. But AI trained on historically biased patent records risks learning "what a successful inventor looks like" from a skewed sample. The tool matters. The training matters more.
Methodology and Limitations
Patent Data
Organization-level assignee data from the Zenodo replication dataset behind the Nature (2025) "Gender disparity in U.S. patenting" paper. Covers U.S. utility patents, 1976-2021, with inventor gender composition per organization.
Company Universe
Top 100 publicly traded tech companies by market cap from CompaniesMarketCap. 89 of 100 had a nonzero assignee match in the patent data. Company matching uses transparent brand-based name matching.
Gender Metrics
Two measures: female inventors as a share of all distinct inventors, and patents with at least one woman inventor. These answer different questions. The first measures inventor representation. The second measures team inclusion.
Key Limitations
Patent data is cumulative through 2021, not year-matched. Workforce disclosures vary by year and metric. Company matching is auditable but imperfect. A true innovation-gap index would pair same-year patent flow with same-year workforce data. This is a representation index, not a causal measure.
How we got here
We started by building our own patent analysis pipeline using the Google Patents API, sampling hundreds of patents per company and estimating inventor gender from first names. That initial analysis produced directionally consistent results but with lower precision. For example, our sampling showed Microsoft at 2.2% female inventors. The full Zenodo dataset shows 10.0% across 52,945 patents. The discrepancy taught us that relevance-sorted API sampling skews toward prolific repeat filers and underrepresents the broader inventor base.
That experience led us to the Zenodo replication data behind the Nature (2025) study, which gave us full-portfolio coverage with academic-quality gender classification. The numbers on this page reflect that upgraded dataset. Our API pipeline remains useful for analyzing companies not in the Zenodo data or for patents filed after 2021.
Where does your company stand?
We can analyze your patent portfolio against your workforce data and show you exactly where the gap is. Which technology areas are unprotected. Which teams are filing and which are not.
The patent data is public. The insight is knowing where to look and what to do about it.
We also build tools that close the gap. Our scanner surfaces strategic concepts in your codebase so the engineers who would never self-nominate can still have their innovations recognized.
Talk to Us About Your GapOr scan your own codebase to see what strategic concepts your engineers are building right now.
Results are strategic concepts, not legal conclusions. Review with a patent attorney.