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
377 biochar companies dominate the directory, and their pure-play violin sprawls fattest at the 1-5 headcount band, meaning most red dots (the shakiest tier) sit right where the mass lives. DAC tells a different story: 125 companies total, but its violin has a visible bulge up near the 50-100 line, so the red dots that do appear there represent real headcount at risk, not garage shops. Enhanced Weathering (33) and Biomass Burial (31) are the thinnest columns on the board, and their dots barely climb past 10 - these pathways are still essentially pre-scale. The so-what: a red dot on a biochar micro-team is a rounding error, but a red dot on a 60-person DAC company is a supply-chain event, and this chart is the only place you can tell those two failures apart at a glance.
Chart refreshed from our CDR Company Directory. We publish a data-viz read like this twice a week.