This chart takes the same founding-year history view and splits each yearly bar by CDR pathway, so you can see not just how many companies were founded in a given year but which kinds of companies. The x-axis is the founding year; bar height is the count of companies started that year; the stacked colors in each bar are the pathways, keyed in the legend.
The reason this split matters is that the field did not grow as one thing. Direct air capture has an older cohort, with companies appearing well before the recent funding wave. Biochar, enhanced weathering, and marine pathways cluster much later, riding the 2020-2023 surge. A raw founding-year total hides that staggering; the stacked view makes the sequencing legible.
Read it as a census of company births, not of activity or tonnes delivered. Firms that shut down are still counted in their founding year, and a tall bar in a pathway reflects entry enthusiasm at that moment, not proof the pathway is working at scale today.
What the chart shows today
Of the 969 companies in our database, 377 are Biochar companies, making it the largest pathway. This pathway also shows a clear founding surge in the last three years, accounting for 25% of all Biochar companies. In contrast, DAC and Mineralization companies were founded earlier, with over half of them established before 2020. This suggests a maturing of these earlier pathways and a rapid expansion in the Biochar sector.
Chart refreshed from our CDR Company Directory. We publish a data-viz read like this twice a week.