January 22, 2026
TDK Corporation (TSE: 6762) was recently named a 2026 Clarivate Top 100 Global Innovator, receiving particularly high evaluations for influence and rarity. For TDK, this is the twelfth time in total, and the ninth time in a row to receive this prestigious award.
“We are greatly honored to be recognized as a Clarivate Top 100 Global Innovator for the twelfth time, and for the ninth consecutive year,” said Shuichi Hashiyama, CTO and Director at TDK Corporation. “In the TDK Group’s Medium-term Plan, which started in the fiscal year March 2025, one of the major themes is evolving TDK’s unique ‘Ferrite Tree,’ namely the strengthening of ‘pre-financial capital’ that will become a source of financial capital in the future. Intellectual property is an important element of our ‘pre-financial capital,’ and TDK promotes intellectual property activities in conjunction with the overall management and business strategies of TDK. The TDK Group actively promotes collaboration not only within the group but also beyond industry and sector boundaries, and in order to respond swiftly to increasingly complex and sophisticated technological demands, we will continue to work on providing new technologies and solutions required by our customers and society,” Hashiyama added.
The TDK Group’s intellectual property governance is based on Empowerment & Transparency, and practices decentralized intellectual property management that respects the circumstances and characteristics of each country and region. Intellectual property activities go beyond merely acquiring rights; they are linked to management and business strategies, aiming to directly connect IP investment to the creation of business value through contract optimization, market and technology analysis, and engagement with stakeholders, including investors. The diverse best practices accumulated at each region are shared and deployed globally, leveraging IP intelligence and networks to enhance the organization’s technological capabilities and drive business growth. As a global company, TDK will continue to maximize regional strengths and achieve sustainable growth.
In 2025, TDK released several industry-leading innovations:
Spin Photo Detector, the world’s first photo-spintronic conversion element combining optical, electronic, and magnetic elements that can respond at an ultra-high speed of 20 picoseconds (20 × 10⁻¹² s) using light with a wavelength of 800 nm – more than 10X faster than conventional semiconductor-based photo detectors, it can be applied to photoelectronic conversion technology, which is expected to improve data processing speed and reduce power consumption, both critical for further AI evolution.
edgeRX Vision, an ultra-fast, AI-powered defect detection system that analyzes customer product images or movies and is capable of identifying components as small as 1 mm with exceptional precision, it boosts production efficiency by reducing false positives and minimizing downtime, operating at speeds of up to 2,000 parts per minute.
Analog reservoir AI chip, jointly developed a prototype using an analog electronic circuit that mimics the cerebellum with Hokkaido University, specializing in time-changing information, and achieves low power consumption and fast computation in ultra-low-power products such as the edge, which directly handles sensor data.
PositionSenseTM, a 2-chip 9-axis sensor solution for absolute orientation detection and fast sensor calibration at ultra-low power consumption, integrating TDK’s 6-axis IMU and TDK’s 3-axis TMR-based magnetometer, on-chip sensor fusion software, and off-chip pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) software, enabling next-gen positioning accuracy for wearables, AR glasses, smartphones, and similar devices.
For details on the report and the full list of the Clarivate Top 100 Global Innovators 2026, visit here.