Four things that move a regional total · What we do to keep it honest · How to cite a regional comparison
Four things that move a regional total
US companies in this ledger include listed firms that can raise through public offerings and ATM programmes, which produce unusually large disclosed numbers. Chinese rows are mostly RMB-reported private rounds, often with rounded or undisclosed amounts. European rows mix priced venture rounds with grant-bundled announcements. Regions with only one or two tracked companies show percentages that describe a sample, not an ecosystem.
Add to this the classification difference: state-parent capital and policy notices sit in the ledger but contribute zero to the total, while a US public-market ceiling is recorded as a disclosed figure with an instrument label. Both are legitimate choices, but they are not symmetric across regions.
What we do to keep it honest
Every regional page shows the number of companies next to the sum, names the largest row, states the median, and links to the methodology. The Chinese language version adds a dedicated section explaining RMB conversion and state capital so a reader does not have to infer it. We never print a growth rate or an investment-gap headline derived from these figures.
We also publish both the raw event ledger and the aggregated JSON, so a reader who wants to exclude public-market instruments, or count only priced equity, can recompute a regional table under their own rule and see exactly where the difference comes from.
How to cite a regional comparison
Name the data cutoff, the counting rule and the sample size in the same sentence as the figure. A phrase like the US leads China in quantum funding is only defensible if it is immediately followed by what was counted. Without that qualifier it is a statement about disclosure conventions presented as a statement about national capability.
Regional snapshot from the current build
| Region | Companies | Disclosed capital | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 11 | $8.6B | 51.0% |
| Europe | 26 | $4.4B | 26.3% |
| China | 10 | $1.6B | 9.8% |
| North America | 3 | $1.4B | 8.4% |
| Middle East | 3 | $457M | 2.7% |
| Asia-Pacific | 9 | $320M | 1.9% |
Shares use disclosed cash only. A region with one or two tracked companies is a small sample, not an ecosystem measurement.
The practical takeaway
Rankings are useful for finding companies and for seeing where disclosed capital concentrates. They are not a measurement of national investment, and we would rather say that on every regional page than let a reader discover it later.