There's at least somewhat a sense that Wolfram's rabbit holing down Conway's Game/Cellular Automata and calling it "A New Kind of Math" was relatively overblown. Certainly Wolfram has his ego in play/blinders on about certain subjects, and in that way you can easily draw parallels between Wolfram and Kurzweil, depending of course on what your own personal take/opinion on their various pet projects happens to be.
I may not agree with Wolfram and his theories (or his ego), but I don't think we can equate him to Kurzweil, Woflram definitely has produced a body of work to substantiate his "rabbit holing" and he's created a business around some of his ideas. However, I agree that the "New kind of Science" was overblown, but definitely not in same league as Kurzweil[1]. There are a few other scientists who have explored the area of cellular automata[2]
I'm certainly not equating them, but Kurzweil has had successes in his projects, too. He's also not the only one exploring his areas of interest. KurzweilAI.net has been a link/news aggregator for many years and essentially an (if not "the") HN for his interest areas. Kurweil also seems to be a somewhat active investor in his ideas (more so than the solo researcher that Wolfram often seems to be), which depending on your point of view is at least equally business minded as Wolfram.
As I stated, whether or not you find the two comparable or not has as much to do with personal opinion as anything else.
I personally find them both extremely interesting gentlemen that have done very interesting things, but that I will also take a large grain of salt with respect to many of their projects. Whether or not the amount of the salt is the same or the number of projects I need it for is the same ("in the same league" even) doesn't stop it from being a sometimes useful comparison.
