Blockchain is one of the many fast-growing and exciting new fields in technology that is quickly gaining popularity in many different applications. With it seemingly being used for everything imaginable, it is surprising to find that there are few patents in edge computing that utilize blockchain. With only sixteen patents issued in the last five years, it is by far the most open category in edge computing.
The current leader in the category is Akamai Technologies, with four patents issued and twelve applications in the last five years. They have been active seemingly since edge computing has been around, but have begun filing much more in the past two years. Akamai is the largest player in the category in terms of portfolio size and in total revenue for the company.
The company with the second most documents is Vapor IO, a startup founded in 2015 that recently raised $90M in funding in January of this year. A much smaller company than Akamai and companies that dominate the edge computing market more generally like Intel and Cisco, Vapor has still managed to make some big moves in the space like partnering with Cloudflare. Vapor IO is rapidly expanding their business with a plan to deploy their Kinetic Edge solution to over 36 cities by 2021 and a recent partnership with Digital Realty for an "edge-to-core" offering in Chicago, Atlanta, and Dallas. Between these partnerships and their recent funding round Vapor IO is well-positioned to make a continued push in expanding their patent portfolio and it would not be surprising to see them launch into becoming the leader of the category or get acquired by a larger company wanting to build off their success.
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