This violin plot sorts every pure-play CDR company in the Directory by its pathway (columns) and its headcount (vertical axis, log scale from 1 to 100+). Each dot is one company, coloured by its current liveliness tier — Active, Moderate, Suspect, or Likely Dead. The grey shape behind each column is the size distribution: where it bulges, that’s where most companies in that pathway sit.
The value here is comparative. A raw company list tells you who exists; this view tells you where the weight sits. Pathways with most dots stacked at the bottom are dominated by sub-10-employee firms — many small entrants, few that have grown. Pathways with dots reaching up the column have produced operators that scaled past the founder-and-a-few-engineers phase. Colour (not vertical position) is what tells you the health story: red dots high up the column mean a sizeable operator went quiet; red dots on the floor are the long tail churning as it always has.
Read it as a snapshot of signal strength, not a verdict on the science. “Likely Dead” means we have stopped seeing credible activity, not that the underlying method failed. Older pathways accumulate more suspect entries mechanically, so do not confuse age with weakness.
What the chart shows today
569 pure-play suppliers carry the sector on their backs with just 9,499 employees between them, averaging roughly 17 heads per company. Biochar dominates the x-axis with 377 entries, and its violin bulges hard at the 1-5 employee band, meaning any red dots there are mostly garage operations rather than load-bearing infrastructure. DAC and Enabling Tech tell a different story: their violins stretch up past the 50-headcount tick, so a red dot in those columns is a genuine fragility signal. Watch Mineralization (42) and Enhanced Weathering (33) too - thin populations mean each dot’s tier shift moves the whole pathway’s risk profile.
Chart refreshed from our CDR Company Directory. We publish a data-viz read like this twice a week.