Rainmaker's Augustus Doricko: weather modification proven, 130 employees, and desalination coming in 2027

Rainmaker's Augustus Doricko: weather modification proven, 130 employees, and desalination coming in 2027

Rainmaker Technology Corporation claims to be the first company in human history to unambiguously and repeatedly modify the weather and prove it. That's the headline Augustus Doricko is leading with, and the evidence he cites is specific enough to take seriously.

The proof of concept

Operations across Oregon, Idaho, Utah, and an undisclosed Middle East location have produced measurable, attributable snowfall. In areas with no ambient precipitation, Rainmaker has documented snow falling exclusively downwind of where its modeled aerosols are directed. In some cases, the seeded portion of an otherwise overcast cloud visibly freezes and falls out, opening a hole in the sky with blue sky and sun visible while snow drops below. Rainmaker uses data from its own proprietary radar, National Weather Service radar, and NASA satellites to quantify how much precipitation is man-made.

The January breakthrough came from aerosol sizing. The team shifted from micron-scale silver iodide particles to nanometer-scale particles at significantly higher concentrations, which produced more reliable, visible effects. Targeting precision has improved from hundreds of square miles to roughly 8,000 acres, with a path to around 1,000 acres — sufficient for mid- to large-scale U.S. ski resorts.

“Rainmaker is the first company in human history to unambiguously, repeatedly modify the weather and prove it... We were about 30 people this time last year. We're a little bit over 130 now... By Q1 of next year, Rainmaker's gonna be doing some desal.”

Customers and contracts

Rainmaker is currently focused on two segments: municipal and state water agencies (such as the Utah Department of Natural Resources), and ski resorts seeking backcountry snowpack rather than trail-level coverage. Insurance is an eventual target — parametric drought coverage could be repriced if cloud seeding structurally reduces crop-failure risk — but Doricko frames that as a later phase.

Pricing splits by customer type. Commercial contracts are outcomes-based: a program stand-up fee, an operations and maintenance fee, and then payment tied to inches of snow produced or gallons of water delivered into a system. Government contracts default to firm fixed-fee structures because agencies struggle to pay for outcomes rather than infrastructure services. Rainmaker recently hired from Palantir to help design the commercial pricing architecture.

Scale and footprint

Headcount has grown from roughly 30 people a year ago to just over 130 today. Approximately 40 are based in Los Angeles, around 60 in Salt Lake City, with smaller operational sites in Pendleton, Oregon, a Middle East location Doricko won't identify publicly, a DC team, and an Alaskan presence in development.

The drone fleet — rotor-wing quadcopters — now flies three to four miles above ground level in winds up to 60 to 70 miles per hour. Doricko describes last year's vehicles as "basically bottle rockets" that would lose flight in severe icing. Reliability in severe icing conditions is now solved, and Rainmaker claims to operate the only rotor-wing vehicle capable of sustained flight in severe icing conditions across NATO.

Regulatory and public sentiment

Of 31 state-level bans on cloud seeding proposed in the most recent legislative session, only two passed: Florida and Louisiana. Doricko's read is that states east of the Mississippi, where water scarcity is less acute, are more susceptible to chemtrail-adjacent skepticism, while western states are more willing to engage on the science.

Federal involvement is a real possibility. President Trump has publicly flagged the need to save the Great Salt Lake. Rainmaker is already operating on the Bear River, the lake's primary tributary, and Doricko argues that scaling those operations roughly tenfold could materially accelerate reversing the lake's aridification. He frames the Bear River project as the regulatory and operational precedent for an eventual interstate weather modification program on the Colorado River, which he says is currently flowing at about 8.1 million acre-feet through Lee's Ferry — roughly half the level measured when the Colorado River Compact was signed. His stated goal is to return the Colorado to its 1920 supply levels by 2031, adding approximately 8 million acre-feet annually through a combination of cloud seeding and adjacent technologies.

What's next

Doricko lays out a four-phase roadmap. Snowpack enhancement is the current core. Warm-cloud summertime precipitation and hail suppression come next, targeted for the coming year. Desalination follows — Doricko discloses, apparently ahead of any formal investor communication, that Rainmaker expects to be doing desalination work by Q1 2027. The fourth phase, framed as a 2028 project, involves automated tractor tilling of biochar or hydrogels into arid soils to increase water retention after precipitation — a closed-loop water system that makes cloud-seeded water actually percolate rather than evaporate.

On the seeding agent itself, silver iodide stays in commercial operations for the next two years given its proven safety profile. Rainmaker is developing a naturally occurring protein-based alternative it plans to introduce in scaled operations next winter. Doricko's primary interest in the switch is efficacy, not PR: the proteins are roughly 1,000 times more effective at nucleating ice than silver iodide.