El Segundo cloud-seeding startup Rainmaker has closed a $100 million Series B to industrialise its drone-based glaciogenic weather-modification platform, CEO Augustus Doricko announced Monday. The round was led by NOA VC with participation from Upfront Ventures, DCVC, Lowercarbon Capital and Dream Ventures.
145 Million Gallons In Four Months
Rainmaker's pitch is data, not aspiration. Over the northern-hemisphere summer, the company says its drones triggered more than 145 million gallons of measured precipitation across seed operations in Oregon, Utah and Alaska, including a 19-million-gallon burst near Homer in a single three-hour window. That translated into snowpack for downstream water utilities and reservoir inflows in drought-hit basins.
Doricko told investors Rainmaker expects to undercut desalination and municipal water-import costs per acre-foot in the Colorado River Basin during the coming 2026-2027 winter season, a first for private weather modification in the US.
What The Series B Buys
The new capital funds a bigger fleet of autonomous seeding drones, an expanded radar and cloud-microphysics team, and formal FAA coordination for beyond-visual-line-of-sight operations in mountainous airspace. Rainmaker is also hiring atmospheric scientists to publish empirical yields per seeding pass and to differentiate glaciogenic operations from the more controversial hygroscopic techniques used elsewhere.
Water Meets Drone Autonomy
The round positions Rainmaker as one of the more distinct climate-tech bets of the fall cycle, alongside massive AI-power moves like Crusoe's cancellation of the Boom turbine order and grid-scale supply deals such as Fluence's new 206 GWh EVE Power framework. Rainmaker's differentiator is that it uses the same beyond-visual-line-of-sight autonomy stack that Zipline is racing to scale in Texas, but points it at rainfall rather than parcels.
Reporting based on coverage from Rainmaker, Fast Company and Crunchbase News.