If you’ve spent any time looking at the "hard tech" scene in El Segundo lately, you’ve probably heard the name Augustus Doricko. He isn't your typical Silicon Valley software guy trying to build another productivity app or a crypto wallet. Honestly, he’s doing something way more ambitious—and a bit controversial. As the Rainmaker CEO, Doricko is essentially trying to hack the sky to solve the water crisis.
He wants to make it rain. On demand.
It sounds like science fiction, or maybe like something a Bond villain would dream up in a mountain lair. But for Doricko, a UC Berkeley dropout and Thiel Fellow, it's just engineering. He looks at the atmosphere and sees a massive, untapped reservoir. Most people don't realize that the clouds floating above us hold roughly five times more water than all the world's rivers combined.
Doricko’s company, Rainmaker, isn't just "trying" to do this. They are already out there, flying drones into supercooled clouds and using silver iodide to trigger precipitation. It’s a bold swing at one of the biggest problems on the planet: freshwater scarcity.
The Origins of a Modern "Rainmaker"
Augustus Doricko didn't just wake up one day and decide to control the weather. Before he was the Rainmaker CEO, he was actually working on the ground—literally. He was developing software to help Texas landowners manage their water wells more efficiently.
That’s where the "aha" moment happened.
You see, if you’re a farmer in a drought-stricken part of the American West, you can have the best well-management software in the world, but it doesn't matter if the well is dry. He realized that managing the remaining water was just a band-aid. The real solution was to increase the supply.
He started looking into cloud seeding. It’s an eighty-year-old technology that most people dismissed as "fringe" or "unproven." But Doricko saw it differently. He saw a field that had been neglected by modern technology for decades. Traditional cloud seeding usually involves old Cessnas flying into storms, tossing flares, and hoping for the best.
There was no real data. No precision. No way to prove it actually worked.
Doricko’s vision was to bring the "Silicon Valley stack"—AI, autonomous drones, and high-res radar—to this dusty old industry. He dropped out of Berkeley, grabbed a Thiel Fellowship (the $100,000 grant given to young founders to skip college and build things), and moved to El Segundo to join the "Gully"—the hub of hard-tech startups like Anduril and SpaceX.
How Rainmaker CEO Augustus Doricko Actually "Hacks" the Weather
Let’s be real: "weather modification" sounds scary to a lot of people. It brings up images of "chemtrails" and government conspiracies. But the science behind what Rainmaker CEO Augustus Doricko is doing is actually pretty straightforward.
It’s called glaciogenic seeding.
The drones, specifically a rugged quadcopter they call Elijah, fly into clouds that contain "supercooled" liquid water. This is water that is below freezing but hasn't turned into ice yet because it doesn't have a "seed" (a nucleus) to latch onto.
- The Target: Rainmaker uses AI-driven weather models (partnering with firms like Atmo) to find these specific, moisture-heavy clouds.
- The Delivery: The Elijah drone flies into the cloud and releases microscopic particles of silver iodide.
- The Reaction: These particles act as the "seed." The supercooled water freezes onto the particle, grows into an ice crystal, gets heavy, and falls.
- The Result: By the time it hits the ground, it’s usually rain or snow.
What makes Doricko’s approach different from the old-school way is the attribution. This is the big one. If a guy in a plane seeds a cloud and it rains, did he cause the rain, or was it going to rain anyway?
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Rainmaker uses a ground-based radar system they call Eden. It’s a phased-array radar that can track the exact "signature" of the seeding event. They can literally see the "plume" of ice crystals forming in the wake of the drone’s flight path. This allows them to show a customer—like a state water agency or a massive farm—exactly how many acre-feet of water they created.
The $25 Million Bet on Water Abundance
In May 2025, Rainmaker announced a $25 million Series A funding round. That’s a lot of cash for a company that "makes rain." The round was led by Lowercarbon Capital (Chris Sacca’s firm), and it included big names like Naval Ravikant and Garry Tan.
Why are these heavy hitters betting on this?
Because the economics of water are getting insane. Traditional solutions to water scarcity are things like desalination plants or massive pipelines. Those projects cost billions and take decades to build. They also use a massive amount of energy.
Cloud seeding, by comparison, is incredibly cheap. Doricko has pointed out that a single gram of silver iodide can potentially trigger thousands of gallons of rain. It’s a massive leverage point. Rainmaker's business model is basically "Water as a Service." They sign contracts with irrigation districts or state governments (like Utah and Colorado) and get paid to boost the snowpack or refill reservoirs.
The Controversy: Did Rainmaker Cause Flooding?
You can’t talk about Rainmaker CEO Augustus Doricko without mentioning the "Project South Texas" controversy. In July 2025, Central Texas was hit with devastating, historic floods.
Because Rainmaker had been active in the region just days before, the internet went wild. Conspiracy theories started flying that Doricko and his drones had "over-seeded" the clouds and caused the disaster.
Doricko had to go on a bit of a PR offensive. He appeared on shows like the Shawn Ryan Show to explain the limitations of the tech. His argument? Rainmaker can't create a storm out of thin air. They can only make an existing cloud 10% to 15% more efficient at dropping its water.
Essentially, if a massive, once-in-a-century weather system is moving through, a few drones aren't going to turn it into a biblical flood. They actually stopped operations on July 2nd because there was too much moisture—they didn't want to add to the problem.
But it highlighted a major hurdle for the company: public perception. Weather is emotional. When people lose their homes to floods, they look for someone to blame. If there’s a guy in El Segundo claiming he can "manipulate the weather," he's an easy target.
What Most People Get Wrong About Cloud Seeding
There are two big myths that Doricko is constantly fighting.
First, the "Stealing Rain" argument. People think that if you make it rain in Texas, you’re "stealing" that water from Louisiana. But atmospheric scientists generally agree that's not how it works. Only a tiny fraction of a cloud's moisture actually falls as rain. By seeding, you’re just slightly increasing that efficiency. The "downwind" effect is usually negligible because the atmosphere is constantly recharging.
Second is the environmental impact of silver iodide. It sounds "chemical" and scary. However, the amounts used are incredibly small. We’re talking about grams spread over square miles. Most studies—including those from the GAO—suggest that at these concentrations, it doesn't pose a threat to human health or ecosystems.
The Future: Terraforming the West?
Augustus Doricko isn't shy about his long-term goal. He doesn't just want to help a few almond farmers in California. He wants to terraform the American West.
He talks about reversing desertification and making the desert green again. It’s the kind of "definite optimism" that has become a hallmark of the new hard-tech movement. While most of the world is focused on "adapting" to climate change and "reducing consumption," Doricko is focused on abundance.
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He believes that with enough energy (nuclear) and enough water (cloud seeding), we can turn "unusable" land into productive ecosystems.
Actionable Insights: What This Means for You
Whether you’re an investor, a policy-maker, or just someone living in a drought zone, the rise of companies like Rainmaker changes the math on water.
- For Landowners: Keep an eye on regional "weather modification" permits. If your local irrigation district starts partnering with firms like Rainmaker, it could stabilize your water rights during dry years.
- For Investors: The "Climate Tech" space is moving from software to "Hard Tech." Look for companies that are vertically integrated—owning the hardware, the software, and the data.
- For the Public: Expect more transparency. Doricko’s push for "radar-verified rain" means that weather modification is moving out of the shadows and into a data-driven, auditable industry.
The "Rainmaker" might sound like a figure from a folk tale, but Augustus Doricko is making it a corporate reality. The next time you see a drone flying into a storm cloud, it might not be a hobbyist—it might be the CEO of a company trying to save the world's water supply, one ice crystal at a time.
If you're interested in following this further, the best place to start is looking at the NOAA weather modification reports. Every single flight Rainmaker takes has to be logged there. It's public record, and it's the best way to see exactly where they are operating in real-time. You can also track their Series A progress and fleet expansion through their official updates, as they continue to scale into international markets like the Sahel and the Punjab.