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8,000+ reasons to celebrate.

Here’s to another record-breaking year for IBM. Let’s count the reasons we’re raising our mugs in celebration today. 24 years as the top earner of US patents with 8,088 patents awarded in 2016—the most received by any group ever. This is all thanks to the ingenuity of 8,500 IBM inventors across 47 countries working on world-changing inventions day after day. From microbe-fighting drones to advancing quantum computing, these patents add up to some exciting innovations for 2017 and beyond.

Unflappable clouds – IBM Patent 9329908

People depend on the cloud for pretty much everything. But clouds get busy. Now when you’re uploading all those videos from vacation, Patent 9329908 will help by spreading the work around so no one part of the cloud is overloaded. So yeah, go ahead and sync those playlists. Which playlists? All of them.

Driving assistants – IBM Patent 9296395

Artificial intelligence will make roads safer, by making sure drivers are focused behind the wheel. Patent 9296395 allows built-in cognitive systems to learn about conditions both inside and outside the car, and take actions if they sense your state-of-mind just isn’t where it needs to be. Whether you’re cruising, commuting or driving cross-country, cognitive will make sure you never ride alone.

Contamination-seeking drones – IBM Patent 9447448

Stay back and let the drones do the dirty work. Patent 9447448 makes cognitive drones able to inspect and decontaminate places so humans don’t have to. The drones’ on-board AI system can collect and analyze samples, so it can identify and clean up any bacteria or outbreak. Meanwhile you get to hang back, safely out of harm’s way.

Amplified quantum – IBM Patent 9455392

We’re making quantum computing a reality. Patent 9455392 improves our ability to dramatically scale up the number of superconductor quantum bits that make really powerful quantum computers really, really, really powerful. So powerful, that no other supercomputer can even compete with it. Not now and not ever.

More understanding machines – IBM Patent 9384450

What if we could learn from questions the same way we learn from answers? Patent 9384450 improves AI’s ability to answer what are called “open domain questions”, or questions that ask information outside of a machine’s previous knowledge. Machines may have a lot to learn, but now we can teach them to understand us better.