The problems market cap index
Every problem worth solving,priced at the limit.
CoinMarketCap ranks assets by what the market has already priced. This ranks problems by what the market could price if someone actually solved them, then subtracts the value companies have already captured. What is left is the headroom: the part of the prize still sitting there unclaimed.
Total ceiling
$10.3T
Claimed, deduped
$436.5B
Measured headroom
$7.0T
No valuation coverage
6 of 15
#1 Longevity & aging · $3.0T ceiling · 6% claimed across the problems with valuation coverage, from 29 valued companies
| # | Problem | Ceiling | Claimed | Headroom | Claimed % | People | $ / person |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Longevity & aging anchored to the combined market cap of big pharma biggest valued holder: Colossal Biosciences · 3 valued of 8 tracked | $3.0T | $15.6B | $3.0T | 0.5% | 8.1B | $370 |
| 2 | Energy abundance anchored to Saudi Aramco (~$1.8T) / NextEra biggest valued holder: First Solar · 13 valued of 34 tracked | $2.0T | $60.8B | $1.9T | 3.0% | 8.1B | $247 |
| 3 | Scientific productivity anchored to a research-infrastructure monopoly (TSMC-of-science) biggest valued holder: OpenAI · 5 valued of 9 tracked | $1.0T | $165.3B | $834.8B | 16.5% | 8.1B | $123 |
| 4 | Climate change anchored to an industrial supermajor + a carbon-removal monopoly no valued company tracked · claimed value unmeasured | $1.0T | unmeasured | ≤ $1.0T | no coverage | 8.2B | $122 |
| 5 | Financial infrastructure anchored to Visa ($692.74B, all-time high) / JPMorgan ($934.57B) no valued company tracked · claimed value unmeasured | $1.0T | unmeasured | ≤ $1.0T | no coverage | 1.3B | $769 |
| 6 | Extreme poverty anchored to Visa/Mastercard ($400-500B) for the next billion no valued company tracked · claimed value unmeasured | $500.0B | unmeasured | ≤ $500.0B | no coverage | 700.0M | $714 |
| 7 | AI datacenter power anchored to NextEra Energy (~$140-160B) scaled 2.5-3x for AI-driven demand growth no valued company tracked · claimed value unmeasured | $400.0B | unmeasured | ≤ $400.0B | no coverage | 8.2B | $49 |
| 8 | Low-cost housing & construction anchored to larger than today’s biggest homebuilders combined biggest valued holder: ICON · 1 valued of 5 tracked | $300.0B | $2.0B | $298.0B | 0.7% | 1.6B | $188 |
| 9 | Pedagogy at scale anchored to the "Google of learning" — a new education default biggest valued holder: Duolingo · 3 valued of 5 tracked | $300.0B | $18.5B | $281.5B | 6.2% | 1.5B | $200 |
| 10 | Infectious disease (malaria, TB, HIV) anchored to Moderna at peak (~$180B) biggest valued holder: Gilead Sciences · 3 valued of 5 tracked | $200.0B | $177.5B | $22.5B | 88.8% | 2.5B | $80 |
| 11 | Biosecurity & pandemic preparedness anchored to a defense prime crossed with Moderna biggest valued holder: Moderna · 3 valued of 4 tracked | $200.0B | $21.1B | $178.9B | 10.5% | 8.1B | $25 |
| 12 | Fertility decline & demographic stagnation anchored to a reproductive-health + IVF platform at global scale biggest valued holder: Kindbody · 2 valued of 4 tracked | $200.0B | $2.1B | $197.9B | 1.1% | 6.0B | $33 |
| 13 | Loneliness & social isolation anchored to a consumer-social platform optimized for connection, not engagement biggest valued holder: Partiful · 1 valued of 4 tracked | $200.0B | $150M | $199.8B | 0.1% | 1.5B | $133 |
| 14 | Newborn survival anchored to a neonatal-device business inside a Medtronic-scale major no valued company tracked · claimed value unmeasured | $30.0B | unmeasured | ≤ $30.0B | no coverage | 2.3M | $13.0K |
| 15 | Neglected tropical diseases anchored to a mid-cap specialty pharma unit, not a major no valued company tracked · claimed value unmeasured | $20.0B | unmeasured | ≤ $20.0B | no coverage | 1.7B | $12 |
Scroll the table sideways on narrow screens. Every ceiling is an editorial estimate at low confidence, not a forecast.
What the last column says
A big prize and a lot of suffering are not the same measurement.
Dollars per person is the ceiling divided by the humans the problem affects: how much capturable equity value exists per person harmed. It is not a measure of how much a problem matters. It is a measure of whether anyone can get paid for fixing it. These are the three lowest rows in the index.
They are low for two different reasons, and the column cannot tell them apart, so read it with that in hand. Neglected tropical diseases is the real case: the cures cost cents, they work, and the ceiling is the smallest on the board because the patients cannot pay. Biosecurity and fertility decline are low for an arithmetic reason instead, since both are recorded as affecting most of humanity and any finite ceiling divided by billions of people goes small. A low figure here is a prompt to check which of the two is happening, not a verdict.
$25 per person affected
Biosecurity & pandemic preparedness$200.0B ceiling against 8.1B people affected.
$33 per person affected
Fertility decline & demographic stagnation$200.0B ceiling against 6.0B people affected.
This is the argument for keeping philanthropy and policy on the board next to the cap tables. A ranked index of market caps, read alone, would quietly tell you to abandon the bottom of its own list. Read the under-supplied board against this one.
How these numbers are made, and where they are weak
Ceiling is a ceiling
Each figure is the in-limit equity value of whoever wins the problem at perfect execution, anchored to a named public comparable so it can be argued down. Every one is marked low confidence on purpose. The point is the order of magnitude and the reasoning, not the digits. Full logic per problem lives in in-limit.ts.
Claimed is a floor, not a census
Claimed uses the 29 tracked companies with a public market cap or last private valuation. The headline counts each company once, even if it maps to several problems. Rows show its full value against each relevant problem because the dataset has no audited segment split. Real claimed value is higher, especially on the problems with the best coverage. Treat every headroom figure as generous.
6 rows have no valuation coverage
Those problems are marked no coverage rather than shown at zero percent claimed, because no tagged company has a usable market cap or valuation here yet. Climate change obviously has companies working on it. An index that scored those rows as pristine opportunities would rank the problems it knows least about the highest, which is exactly backwards, so their headroom is capped at the ceiling and left unclaimed as a to-do.
Ceiling is not the same as headroom
The biggest ceiling is not automatically the best place to start. A $3T prize that is already dense with funded teams can be a worse founding decision than a $300B prize nobody has touched. That trade is what start or join exists to settle, problem by problem.
Mixing stocks and flows
Private valuations and public market caps are not strictly comparable, and a valuation set in a tender years ago is not a live price. Both are summed here anyway, because the alternative is dropping most private companies from the board entirely. It is the loosest joint in this table.
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