Ant Group Recognized as a Top 100 Global Innovator 2025

Ant Group has been recognized for the fourth consecutive year as one of the Top 100 Global Innovators 2025 by Clarivate, a global leader in providing transformative intelligence, identifies and ranks organizations leading the world in technology research and innovation. This recognition reaffirms Ant Group's ongoing commitment to excellence in innovation, particularly in AI and other critical digital technologies.

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Gordon Samson, President, Intellectual Property, Clarivate, said, “Being recognized as a Top 100 Global Innovator is a remarkable achievement given the pace of change - since 2000, we’ve seen an 80-fold increase in the volume of inventions. Competition is more global than ever before, and developments in one region can have a significant global impact. Ant Group has demonstrated extraordinary influence in the industry and achieved significant innovative success on a global scale. We congratulate Ant Group for being named a Top 100 Global Innovator for four consecutive years.”

In recent years, Ant Group has significantly increased its investment in technology, particularly in AI, to drive innovation for consumers, small businesses, and partners. Its latest sustainability report shows that R&D spending reached RMB 21.19 billion (USD 2.9 billion) in 2023. As of November 2024, the company had filed 34,576 patent applications globally, with 97% being invention patents.

In 2024, Ant Group launched a series of AI-powered services to enhance user experience, including various AI assistants for everyday services, personal investment, and healthcare. For businesses, Antom Copilot was launched as the world's first AI agent designed to simplify the payment integration and orchestration process for merchants, while Antom Shield uses advanced AI to strengthen fraud detection, optimize conversion rates and drive growth.

To ensure the security and validation of Generative AI, Ant Group has collaborated with leading tech companies and institutions, including OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, to develop two international industry standards: the “Generative AI Application Security Testing and Validation Standard” and the “Large Language Model Security Testing Method”.

Beyond AI, Ant Group introduced Alipay Tap! in July 2024 to simplify the experience for both businesses and consumers. This feature speeds up in-store mobile payments by allowing users to tap their unlocked phones against a merchant's USB checkout device, significantly enhancing merchant checkout efficiency, especially during peak hours. In addition to payments, Alipay Tap! simplifies access to a wide range of everyday services. For example, users can tap to order food at restaurants, unlock vending machines, rent power banks, and more. As of November 2024, Alipay Tap! has been adopted by businesses in over 100 major cities across China, available in over 1,000 shopping malls and commercial districts.

With its continued focus on AI, digital innovation, and global collaboration, Ant Group remains committed to shaping the future of technology and delivering enhanced digital experiences for users and businesses.

Methodology

The Top 100 Global Innovators uses a complete comparative analysis of global invention data to assess the strength of every patented idea, using measures tied directly to their innovative power. To move from the individual strength of inventions to identifying the organizations that create them more consistently and frequently, Clarivate sets two threshold criteria that potential candidates must meet and then adds a measure of their patented innovation output over the past five years. For full information, please visit the Top 100 Global Innovators 2025 methodology site.

About Clarivate

Clarivate is a leading global provider of transformative intelligence. We offer enriched data, insights & analytics, workflow solutions and expert services in the areas of Academia & Government, Intellectual Property and Life Sciences & Healthcare. For more information, please visit www.clarivate.com

About Ant Group

Ant Group aims to build the infrastructure and platforms to support the digital transformation of the service industry. Through continuous innovation, we strive to provide all consumers and small and micro businesses equal access to digital financial and other daily life services that are convenient, sustainable and inclusive.

For more information, please visit our website at www.antgroup.com or follow us on Twitter @AntGroup.

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