Blog

As we close out 2025 and look ahead to 2026, we reflect on a year marked by meaningful innovation, strong licensing momentum, strategic expansion into new markets, and recognition of our wireless, video, and AI research and leadership. This year’s achievements underscore InterDigital’s influence in empowering the technologies and capabilities that shape how we connect.

Delivering Record-Setting Financial Performance

We began the year with exceptional momentum fueled by new license agreements, renewed partnerships, and continued adoption of our standards-essential technologies. We signed two multi-year agreements with top ten Chinese smartphone vendors and a new, more than $1 billion licensing agreement with Samsung, the largest in our history. 

Beyond smartphones, 2025 marked significant growth in our market impact, including:

• New and renewed agreements with Seiko Solutions, Sharp, and a leading EV-charger manufacturer, expanding our footprint into IoT and EV infrastructure.
• A major PC sector milestone, with HP signing a video and Wi-Fi license.

This momentum across all our licensing programs helped drive InterDigital’s annualized recurring revenue to an all-time record.

Deepening Our Expertise Through Strategic Investments

In recent years, InterDigital has reinvested approximately half of our recurring revenue in research, innovation, and portfolio development. This year, we strengthened our research workforce and deepened our portfolio of video and AI patents with the acquisition of Deep Render, a standout startup whose AI-driven video compression techniques expand our expertise in next-generation codecs.

Elevating the Next Generation of Leaders

2025 also saw several important leadership appointments that reflect our enduring industry influence.

• Julia Mattis was named Chief Licensing Officer, bringing to the role more than 15 years of InterDigital experience, upwards of $4 billion in negotiated agreements since 2021, and an unparalleled understanding of global IP ecosystems.
• This year, InterDigital also elevated and hired several leaders to VP roles, including Scott Kalish, Angela Barr, Simona Popa, Doug Castor, Ghyslain Pelletier, and Ryan Pohlman.

InterDigital's long-standing leadership in standards also shone this year:

• Diana Pani was re-elected to Chair RAN2 in 3GPP, continuing her leadership of one of the most influential wireless standards groups. Her reputation of leadership, expertise, and consensus-building has enabled her to lead at the highest levels of technological and 6G development.
• Alain Mourad was re-elected to ETSI ISAC ISG Chair, driving essential pre-standards efforts to advance 6G development and shape forthcoming specifications in 3GPP and IEEE standards bodies.
• Doug Castor was re-elected to Vice Chair the ATIS NextG Alliance National 6G Roadmap group, shaping the technologies and critical industry dialogues around next-generation wireless.
• Ralf Schaefer was re-elected to the DVB Steering Committee, his sixth term. He was also elected to the Media Coding Industry Forum (MC-IF) Board of Directors.
• Philippe Bordes and Martino Freda were named InterDigital’s Inventors of the Year, celebrating their outstanding work in wireless communications, video codecs, and delivery protocols, which exemplifies the impactful innovation that drives our long-term value.

The skill, expertise, and trust of these leaders equip InterDigital to tackle the challenges and solve the problems that unlock the potential for 6G, next-generation video, and an AI-enabled landscape.

A Standard of Excellence

InterDigital was widely recognized in 2025, reinforcing our role as an innovation leader, workplace of choice, and influential contributor to our industry and community.

• In addition to being ranked #1 among America’s most successful mid-cap companies by Forbes, InterDigital received recognition in TIME, Fortune’s “100 Fastest Growing Companies”, and Newsweek’s “America’s Greatest Companies 2025”, reflecting our strong corporate performance, workplace vitality, and innovation leadership.
• Liren Chen was named among Managing IP’s 50 Most Influential in IP, and among the Top 40 Market Makers by IAM.
• Liren Chen, Julia Mattis, Rob Stien, Steve Akerley, Clay Gaetje, Blair Watters, Lenny Kravets, Simona Popa, Drew DeVoogd, and Scott Clark were named among this year’s IAM Strategy 300 list of the world’s leading IP strategists.
• InterDigital was awarded the Produit en Bretagne label, recognizing the company’s deep-rooted commitment to France’s Brittany region, especially critical research training and investments in Brittany-based innovation hubs.
• InterDigital was selected by the National Spectrum Consortium to lead research and conduct demonstrations of advanced spectrum coexistence for commercial and government networks. 
• InterDigital's innovation was selected as a finalist for several Glotel Telecommunications, Leading Lights, and World Communication Awards, recognizing outstanding RAN and AI innovations.
• Quentin Avril, alongside PhD students and collaborators from INSA at the University of Rennes were awarded an honorable mention for Best Presentation at the ACM SIGGRAPH Motion, Interaction and Games conference, recognizing the latest research to support more realistic experiences, digital character creation, and avatar-based communication.

Our Innovation on the Global Stage

• InterDigital’s innovation begins at home, and 2025 provided exciting opportunities to showcase our innovation and industry partnerships to our colleagues and diverse audiences. In France, members from the Rennes Video Lab demonstrated the latest streaming innovation and insights into next-gen video codecs with various media and analysts, and in the U.S., members of the Wireless Research team held a Conshohocken R&I Day to introduce ongoing 6G research and lead engaging discussions with peers and partners from Ericsson, Nokia, Next G Alliance, among others. 
• At Mobile World Congress Barcelona, we presented industry-leading demos in integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), solutions for smartphone energy savings, innovation enabling immersive sporting experiences, and AI-enhanced wireless techniques in collaboration with Keysight. Valérie Allié also presented how InterDigital’s wireless, video, and AI innovation might reimagine the ways we experience sporting events like the Olympics in the future. 
• At Mobile World Congress Shanghai in June, Milind Kulkarni joined an expert panel around the innovation, collaboration, and standards contributions underpinning the future of connectivity, and how industry can guarantee the success of 6G.
• At the World AI Conference in Shanghai, Gordon Zhang shared a powerful vision for the ways 6G and AI will jointly define the next era of connectivity. 
• At EuCNC, InterDigital demonstrated ISAC innovation as part of the 6G-SNS PREDICT-6G and MultiX-6G projects. Alain Mourad and Sebastian Robitzsch joined panels sharing expertise on ISAC, key elements of the 6G system, and the bridge between research and standards.
• At IEEE Milcom, Milind Kulkarni joined a panel discussing the spectrum challenges and solutions to leverage AI and wireless technologies for coexistence between commercial and government networks, and introduced InterDigital’s Advanced Spectrum Coexistence innovation. 
• At the Brooklyn 6G Summit organized by Nokia and NYU, Diana Pani and Doug Castor shared their expertise on the role of verticals in 6G value creation and 6G standards priorities. 
• At NAB, InterDigital’s Video engineers showcased advancements in high dynamic range (HDR) production, distribution, and display solutions driving “HDR Without Limits”.
• At IBC, InterDigital’s demonstration of VVC with Film Grain Preservation set a new benchmark for cinema-grade quality streaming – balancing creative authenticity with next-gen coding efficiency.
• At SMPTE, InterDigital Video engineers displayed state-of-the-art video workflows and innovative approaches to enable seamless interoperability for HDR conversions.
• At the LES 2025 Annual Meeting, Liren Chen shared his expertise on creating value in innovation-based companies through licensing, partnering, and managing strategies.
• At the Munich IP Forum, Julia Mattis joined a panel on global SEP disputes and at the 14th Annual China IP Conference, Jason Wu presented InterDigital’s video of the virtuous cycle of innovation, standards, and patent licensing. 
• At IPBC Global, Josh Schmidt spoke on the next frontier for IP value creation, and at the LexisNexis Global Standards Conference, Milind Kulkarni shared insights on a 6G innovation and research. 

Impactful Thought Leadership

Our leaders’ expertise and insight shape our understanding of the future of wireless, video, and AI.

Bridge to 6G

• To begin the year, Milind Kulkarni outlined the progress, milestones, and pathway to realize 6G, and in June, the Wireless Standards team detailed the key takeaways from a pivotal RAN plenary that reviewed industry feedback to shape the direction for 3GPP’s 6G standard. 
• InterDigital sponsored TelecomTV’s “Defining 6G Networks” report series, and Diana Pani contributed industry insights through an expert roundtable exploring industry contributions and standards roadmap to design and build consensus for 6G.
• Our “Bridge to 6G: Spotlight on 3GPP Release 20” white paper, produced with ABI Research, explained why the current 3GPP Release 20 will be the foundation for future 6G standards and the growing consensus for simplified, energy-efficient, and AI-driven network architectures in 6G.
• Milind Kulkarni was featured in TM Broadcast International’s October feature “5G as today’s driver, 6G as tomorrow’s frontier”, discussing how 5G and 6G will reshape media delivery, production, and broadcasting.
• To foster 6G research, InterDigital renewed academic partnerships with institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur to explore nearfield communications, with Virginia Tech to further research in semantic communications, and with the University of Texas at Austin, exploring AI for 6G.

State of Streaming

InterDigital’s video research provides solutions to improve video quality and enhance how the world communicates by enabling video experiences to be more immersive, realistic, and efficient.

• InterDigital sponsored the Parks and Associates “Streaming Live Sports: Where Opportunity Meets Complexity” report, which details the consumer trends, enterprise challenges, and essential value of video optimization technology to navigate a rapidly evolving media landscape.
• InterDigital and Futuresource Consulting released “Media over Wireless: Networks for Ubiquitous Video”, detailing how surging demand for immersive content could overwhelm current wireless networks if not for the accelerating innovation in 6G and video codecs. 
• InterDigital published “Now Buffering: How to Solve the Top Hurdles Fans Face in Streaming Live Sports”, an e-book outlining the key viewing challenges and potential benefit from next-gen video codecs like VVC, which promise greater efficiency and reliability. 

AI Innovation

AI is deeply woven within our research and innovation, revealing new opportunities and paradigms that will define how we connect, communicate, and experience the world.

• A Streaming Media Global article “AI Helps InterDigital Reach Beyond VVC in Race to Develop Next-Gen Codec” spotlights InterDigital’s AI use for innovation and exploring greater codec efficiency beyond VVC. 
• We sponsored a TelecomTV “AI in the RAN” report, which surveyed mobile operators on their sentiments towards AI and its potential applications and benefits in the radio access network.
• As part of their Nemo.ai Common Lab, InterDigital and French public research institute Inria launched the Nisk.ai project exploring AI for Energy-Efficient Video Coding. AI-driven approaches to video compression can deliver equivalent visual quality at lower bitrates, reducing both bandwidth requirements and energy consumption.
• InterDigital also extended support for a new research grant with the French Embassy in Belgium to accelerate AI-driven vision research for early-career scholars.

Sustainability

• Alongside the 2025 Corporate Sustainability Report, InterDigital spotlighted our sustainable efforts and our carbon handprint, bolstered by pioneering innovation.
• InterDigital published “Spotlight on Sustainability: Towards a Greener TV and Value Chain”. The report with Futuresource outlined the state of video sustainability, trends driving emissions, and emerging enterprise sustainability solutions.
• InterDigital sponsored the CSS Insights report, “Enabling Energy-Aware Display Technology in a Sustainable World”, examining the energy impact of video consumption on devices and why InterDigital’s PVR technology is an exciting sustainable solution.
• Throughout the year, engineers Erik Reinhard introduced why InterDigital’s PVR technology offers a scalable solution to a goliath problem facing the video industry, and Bill Redmann explained how PVR could help address the significant energy consumed by 8K displays.
  

2026: Building on a Transformative Year

2025 was a milestone year, with achievements reflecting the dedication of our global teams, the strength of our partnerships, and the continued relevance of our wireless, video, and AI innovation.

As we enter 2026, we do so with the momentum of a strong licensing foundation, unparalleled innovation and leadership in 6G, AI, and next-gen video, steady influence across global standards, and a talented workforce that allows us to innovate today and empower tomorrow.