Japan vs South Africa
South Africa has 1.1× more funding but Japan has more orgs. Across 4 dimensions — funding, models, compute, orgs — one country pulls the AI race forward; the other chases.
LIVE
#1 = South Africa RATIO 1.1× SHARE OF WORLD · 2/100 UPDATED 2026-05-08
Japan 1/100 South Africa 1/100 rest of world 98/100
Together =
2%
of all AI funding tracked worldwide.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🇯🇵 Japan
1/100
$668M · #14 of 40
🇿🇦 South Africa
1/100
$723M · #13 of 40
SRC: epoch · forbes · cbi · manual-gaps 1 SQUARE = 1% OF WORLD AI FUNDING
🇯🇵 Japan
#14 of 40 · country
━━ vs ━━
South Africa 🇿🇦
#13 of 40 · country
BARS NORMALIZED PER-ROW TO MAX(L,R) PINK = Japan · BLUE = South Africa
note — South Africa runs 1.1× more AI capital than Japan. Whether that translates to frontier compute is what the next chart shows.
— ai-race-map · methodology @ /m
┌─ tile area ≈ funding · column width ≈ side total · all orgs shown ──────────────────────────── ┐
🇯🇵 Japan 3/7 · $668M
🇿🇦 South Africa 2/2 · $723M
CLICK A TILE → ORG PROFILE SOUTH AFRICA RUNS 1.1× JAPAN