Who has promised money to whom in AI

companies
202
links
272
promised
$3.6tn
Each line is a link. It is orange where the money leaves and blue where the money arrives. A bigger circle means the company has disclosed more money. An empty circle means it has disclosed none. An arc is a link that runs from right to left. It completes a loop, which is a route that returns to the company where it started.

Scroll sideways to see the rest of the chart.

The chart shows every company in the data that FT Alphaville published, and every link in the data that names a company. A link means that one company has promised money to another. Almost every company sits to the right of the companies that have promised it money. Money therefore moves from left to right along almost every link. Hover over a company to highlight its links, and click the company to keep them highlighted. FT describes the data as 176 deals between 202 companies. The chart has more links than FT has deals, because a deal with several investors appears as one link for each investor.

Routes that return money to the company that promised it

Money moves in one direction along almost every route in the chart. For example, an investor promises money to an AI lab, and the lab promises money to a cloud provider. Among eleven companies, money can also return to the company that promised it. A route that returns to the company where it started is called a loop. The simplest loop is two companies that have each promised money to the other. Click a loop in the list to see it in the chart. The chart draws the loop as dark lines, and each arrow shows which way the money moves.

Money moves from left to right along almost every link, so every loop needs at least one link that runs from right to left. The chart draws seven links from right to left, as arcs above and below the other links. Each arc is a link in FT's data like any other, and no arrangement of the companies needs fewer than seven of them. FT reports that Sona, which compiled the data, marks about 120 of its 176 deals as "high circularity". Sona's test is broader than a loop and its results are not in the published data, so the chart does not show them.