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 companies are on the chart today, sharing just 9,525 employees between them - a median well under the 10-person tick on most pathways. Biochar dominates with 377 entries, and its violin is bottom-heavy: the bulk of its dots, including most of the red ones, sit in the 1-5 headcount band, which reads more like churn among micro-ventures than sector distress. DAC’s 125 companies tell a different story, with dots spread up past the 50 mark and a few stale-tier ones sitting uncomfortably high on the axis. That is the pattern worth watching: red dots at size 3 are noise, red dots at size 60 are payroll. If you are tracking pathway health, DAC’s mid-size band deserves a closer look this month than biochar’s long tail of dormant one-person shops.
Chart refreshed from our CDR Company Directory. We publish a data-viz read like this twice a week.