Thermodynamic ranking of companies in Kardashev terms

Civilization climbs on the energy it can harness.

Joules, not vibes.

The Kardashev Index ranks the companies pushing humanity up the gradient. Most of every score is measured: reported energy, compute and growth, converted to watts in code from documents we fetch and verify ourselves. The rest is clearly labelled opinion, argued only from verified quotes.

See the leaderboard How it’s measured

15Entities ranked

65%Measured weight

179Verified sources

The Leaderboard

Who is moving us up the curve.

Kardashev Index, 0–10: 65% measured from reported energy, compute and growth; 35% labelled opinion. Higher means more fuel on the fire.

Companies ranked by Kardashev Index score, 0 to 10: 65% measured from reported figures, 35% opinion
Rank	Entity	K-equiv	Energy	Compute	Growth	Opinion	Index
01	X.AI LLC Aerospace & AI	—	no figure	7.9	—	8.4	Accelerating 8.2/10 conf 25% · meas 43% v2.13
02	Amazon.com, Inc. Internet Retail	—	—	9.5	6.5	6.3	Climbing 7.2/10 conf 47% · meas 50% v2.15
03	Microsoft Corporation Software - Infrastructure	0.363	6.6	—	7.8	6.0	Climbing 6.7/10 conf 53% · meas 69% v2.13
04	Alphabet Inc. Internet Content & Information	0.357	6.4	—	7.4	6.0	Climbing 6.5/10 conf 46% · meas 66% v2.13
05	Meta Platforms, Inc. Internet Content & Information	0.332	5.8	—	7.1	6.0	Climbing 6.2/10 conf 42% · meas 69% v2.16
06	Oracle Corporation Enterprise Software	0.277	4.4	—	8.0	7.2	Climbing 6.1/10 conf 56% · meas 69% v2.13
07	NVIDIA Corporation Semiconductors	0.208	2.7	—	8.9	7.6	Holding 5.8/10 conf 57% · meas 62% v2.13
08	Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited Semiconductors	0.355	6.4	—	5.2	5.2	Holding 5.8/10 conf 44% · meas 69% v2.16
09	Vistra Corp. Electric Utilities	0.469	9.2	—	5.7	1.8	Holding 5.3/10 conf 65% · meas 56% v2.16
10	Intel Corporation Semiconductors	0.313	5.3	—	1.7	6.0	Holding 4.8/10 conf 54% · meas 66% v2.16
11	Equinix, Inc. REIT - Specialty	0.301	5.0	—	5.7	3.6	Holding 4.5/10 conf 62% · meas 56% v2.13
12	Digital Realty Trust, Inc. Specialty REIT	0.316	5.4	—	4.6	3.6	Holding 4.5/10 conf 55% · meas 56% v2.16
13	Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Semiconductors	0.148	1.2	—	6.7	7.5	Holding 4.2/10 conf 42% · meas 75% v2.13
14	Crusoe AI data center infrastructure	0.112	0.3	5.8	—	6.2	Holding 4.0/10 conf 46% · meas 59% v2.13
15	International Business Machines Corporation Information Technology Services	0.241	3.5	—	2.8	4.8	Decelerating 3.7/10 conf 51% · meas 69% v2.13

Not ranked yetApproved; waiting on a measured run or more verified data

Anduril Industriesinsufficient data: energy undisclosed and 39% of the remaining weight scored (needs 60%, including compute or growth)
Anthropic PBCinsufficient data: energy undisclosed and 11% of the remaining weight scored (needs 60%, including compute or growth)
Extropic Corp.insufficient data: energy undisclosed and 39% of the remaining weight scored (needs 60%, including compute or growth)
Tesla, Inc.energy source found but couldn't be read (3: PDF larger than 4 MB in-process cap; not parsed; large PDF not read: another large PDF is being read; skipped to protect memory; Wayback copies unusable: 20261013034501 error: PDF larger than 4 MB in-); no automatic retry queued (retry limit reached); the

Bands — Accelerating 8+ · Climbing 6+ · Holding 4+ · Decelerating <4 Measured figures are computed in code from sources we fetched; opinion is model-judged against written rubrics. Entities are admin-approved; scores are never hand-edited.

Why joules

Progress has a unit.

Every civilization that ever mattered was a machine for turning energy into possibility. We think the builders doing that work should be measured — and seen.

Energy is the substrate.

Every model trained, every factory run, every launch is energy put to work. A civilization’s reach is its power budget, and the companies that grow it widen what everyone can do.
Measure, don’t emote.

Figures come from documents we fetch ourselves, with the verbatim quote that states them. Dead links and quotes we can’t find are thrown out. Disagree with the evidence, not the mood. Vibes are not data.
The gradient points up.

Energy harnessed, compute built, growth compounding — then the frontier pushed, the speed of building, the permission to build. Forces that move us toward a planet’s worth of power, then a star’s. The light is worth climbing toward.

The Kardashev Ladder

Each rung is ten billion times the last.

Proposed by Nikolai Kardashev in 1964; interpolated by Carl Sagan as K = (log₁₀P − 6) / 10, with P in watts.

Today

Humanity, all sources combined. Roughly Type 0.73.

≈ 2 × 10¹³ W

Type I

Planetary. All the power available on a world.

10¹⁶ W

Type II

Stellar. The full output of a star, harvested by a Dyson swarm.

10²⁶ W

Type III

Galactic. The light of a hundred billion suns.

10³⁶ W

Curve is schematic — at true scale, everything before Type III would be a flat line. “Today” uses ~620 EJ/yr of global primary energy.

Add to the board

Know a builder the index is missing?

Suggestions are reviewed by admins before anything is measured or published.

Civilization climbs on the energy it can harness.

Who is moving us up the curve.

Progress has a unit.

Energy is the substrate.

Measure, don’t emote.

The gradient points up.

Each rung is ten billion times the last.

Know a builder the index is missing?