Rainmaker Technology has closed a $100M Series B for technology that tries to pull more water out of the sky.
The El Segundo company, led by founder and chief executive Augustus Doricko, builds weather-hardened drones that release silver iodide into storm clouds to trigger rain or snow. Proprietary radar algorithms, satellite data and validation tools are meant to measure exactly how much precipitation the flights produce, which is the part weather modification has always struggled to prove.
The round drew NOA VC, Upfront Ventures, DCVC, Lowercarbon Capital and Dream Ventures. Rainmaker will spend the money enlarging its research team, running frontier atmospheric research and expanding outside its current footprint of Utah, Idaho, Oregon, California and Colorado.
Cloud seeding is decades old and mostly the preserve of state agencies and utilities. The bet here is that cheaper, instrumented aircraft turn it from a subsidised experiment into a measurable service that water districts, farms and utilities will buy.
Critics still question whether seeding reliably adds precipitation rather than redistributing it, and Doricko’s own framing leans on the measurement stack as the answer. Investors are effectively funding a data company wrapped around a legacy technique, which is also why the hiring push targets researchers rather than pilots.
