As the world enjoys a new age of innovation brought on by the widespread adoption of AI and other technologies, Huawei is increasingly positioning itself as a catalyst for the next wave of global creativity and invention.
Emphasizing openness, intellectual property (IP) stewardship, and broad collaboration as the bedrock of its long-term growth strategy, the company recently held its sixth Innovation and IP Forum in Beijing, underscoring how such a commitment to open innovation could unlock new opportunities for business and society.
A gathering of international experts in innovation and IP, the forum showcased Huawei’s distinctive approach in discovering and encouraging the next big thing. Rather than adopting a closed, proprietary posture, the company aimed to highlight intellectual property not merely as a competitive asset, but as a shared foundation for collective technological progress.
Huawei’s strategy combines rigorous IP protection with open source initiatives, contributions to technical standards, and academic publishing.
To further lower the barriers to innovation moving forward, Huawei has enhanced its Chaspark Patent platform - a freely available resource for researchers worldwide to be able to access patent data. Now powered by semantic search and AI summarization, the move reflects Huawei’s belief in democratizing access to intellectual property being integral to driving transformative technologies. In just one year after launch, this platform has attracted more than two million visits.
A core dimension of Huawei’s vision lies in its "Top Ten Inventions" programme, which in 2025 recognized inventions spanning critical future domains such as computing, mobile operating systems, and data storage. Here are just a few technologies who won this year’s recognition.
Scale-Up Ultra-Large-Scale SuperPoD Computing Platform
This invention uses a high-speed interconnect bus to form a fully peer-to-peer architecture that integrates all of the resources in a SuperPoD into a shared resource pool, including heterogeneous parallel processors, CPUs, memory, storage, and others. This allows all resources to be flexibly allocated and composed like building blocks based on different task requirements. This architecture can connect hundreds to thousands of AI processors, allowing them to work together like a single computer.
HarmonyOS Full-Stack Architectural Innovation
HarmonyOS is a next-generation intelligent operating system for all scenarios. With new, full-stack innovations, it now provides users with a smoother, more secure experience than ever. The Ark Engine is at the heart of it all, bringing together a number of technological breakthroughs that enable more efficient coordination between software, hardware, and ecosystems for a more optimized experience from the kernel up. The HarmonyOS Security Architecture revolutionizes security from underlying technology to ecosystem application. Using a system-level encrypted sharing mechanism, it gives users fine-grained control over their data even when it leaves the device, making data sharing more secure.
Next-Generation SSD with Ultra-High Capacity and Performance
This invention leverages innovative integration of advanced packaging technology, synergy between hardware, software, and chips, and algorithms to create a next-generation SSD. This SSD delivers a fourfold increase in the capacity density of storage systems and significant breakthroughs in performance, while enabling hour-scale recovery for hundreds of terabytes of data. All told, the SSD makes storing, accessing, and using vast amounts of data faster and reliable, enhancing the efficiency of AI systems while driving the advancement of the solid-state storage industry.
These awards spotlight the company’s commitment to not just internal R&D, but to broad-based innovation that can ripple across industries.
Huawei’s scale in patent licensing further illustrates its influence. By the end of 2024, hundreds of millions of devices, including over 2.7 billion 5G handsets, 1.2 billion Wi-Fi devices, and 3.2 billion multimedia units, were licensed under Huawei’s patents, with 48 Fortune Global 500 firms among the company’s licensees, signifying both reach and trust in its IP framework.
Underpinning all of this is Huawei’s substantial and sustained investment in research and development. The company routinely allocates at least 10% of its revenue to R&D (a figure which has risen to over 20% in recent years) - and has invested more than CNY 1.24 trillion over the past decade.
This financial commitment translates into deep technical expertise and a formidable portfolio: as of the end of 2024, Huawei held over 150,000 active patents globally.
Huawei’s drive to encourage future innovation is not just a buzzword phrase - by nurturing open innovation ecosystems, supporting global access to IP information, and integrating academic and industrial research, the company looks to create a virtuous cycle in which innovation results in more innovation.
"Open innovation drives society and technology forward, and it's in our DNA. We are committed to an open approach to innovation," said the company's Chief Legal Officer, Liuping Song at the IPR Forum. "Huawei respects the IP of others, and protects its own, including patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets."
Heiwai Tang, Associate Vice-President of the University of Hong Kong, also addressed the forum, stating, "Innovation is a core driver of modern economic growth, and its sustained operation relies upon a robust, open, and globally-trusted patent system. I'm pleased to see companies like Huawei adhering to international IP norms, which maximizes the value of IP while fostering a healthy business ecosystem."
This strategy positions Huawei not only as a technology leader, but also as an enabler of sustainable, shared progress - one that aligns business interests with broader societal and economic development.