🔦 Spotlight
Hey Los Angeles.
Last year, we introduced you to an El Segundo startup that had raised $25M to make it rain.
This year, rain is apparently just the beginning.
Rainmaker raised a $100M Series B to expand its cloud-seeding technology and pursue a much larger ambition: building the scientific and technical infrastructure to understand, influence and eventually mitigate extreme weather.
In startup parlance, it is a pivot from “make it rain” to “solve the weather.” Subtle.
The round included NOA VC, DCVC, Lowercarbon Capital, Dream Ventures and LA-based Upfront Ventures.
When we covered Rainmaker last year, the company was preparing to expand its drone fleet, atmospheric research and commercial partnerships.
It now says it has generated more than 145M verified gallons of precipitation during a four-month period. During a summer research program near Homer, Alaska, Rainmaker says one operation produced 19M gallons in three hours.
Those are eye-catching numbers. The company’s ambitions are considerably larger.
Rainmaker is working to build what it calls a “Weather Prime,” combining atmospheric science, autonomous aircraft, sensors and predictive software into an infrastructure platform capable of responding to water scarcity and extreme weather.
The idea is to make cloud seeding cheaper, more measurable and easier to deploy at scale. Rainmaker’s drones deliver specialized particles into carefully selected clouds, while radar and software help determine where to operate and measure how much additional rain or snow may have been produced.
The new funding will help Rainmaker hire more atmospheric scientists, meteorologists, chemists and engineers while expanding its research and data-collection capabilities. The company also plans to move toward increasingly autonomous operations, allowing more missions to be conducted at a lower cost.
Rainmaker expects its cost per acre-foot of water to fall below alternatives such as desalination and agricultural fallowing in the Colorado River Basin during the upcoming water season. If that projection holds, cloud seeding could begin looking less like an experimental intervention and more like another piece of water infrastructure.
That “if” is doing some serious atmospheric lifting.
Cloud seeding has existed for decades, but measuring its precise effects remains scientifically difficult. A successful operation requires the right type of cloud at the right moment, and proving exactly how much precipitation would have fallen without intervention is no simple task.
Rainmaker’s next challenge, therefore, is not merely to produce more rain. It must make the results measurable, repeatable and credible enough for governments, farmers and communities to trust.
That responsibility becomes even more important as the company expands its vision beyond water. Rainmaker describes cloud seeding as the first step toward eventually mitigating hail, heat and other weather-related threats.
It is a grand ambition, even by startup standards. Most founders promise to disrupt an industry. Rainmaker wants to influence the atmosphere.
The company’s location makes the mission particularly fitting. El Segundo has become a center for startups tackling physical problems with drones, satellites, factories and defense systems. Rainmaker is applying that same aerospace-minded approach to one of the West’s oldest constraints.
For Los Angeles, this story is about more than another substantial funding round. Rainmaker has progressed from proposing that cloud-seeding technology could be modernized to claiming it has produced rainfall at a meaningful scale.
Now, with four times the capital it announced last year, the company must prove that those results can become dependable infrastructure.
California has never been shy about reshaping nature to support its growth. Rainmaker is betting that the next great water project will not be built across the landscape.
It will fly into the clouds.
More from this week’s LA startup and venture scene below.
🤝 Venture Deals
LA Companies
- Hair care brand Arey raised an undisclosed Series A led by Unilever Ventures, with returning investors Greycroft and Female Founders Fund also participating. The company, which develops supplements and topical treatments for graying and aging hair, will use the funding for product development, clinical research, hiring and retail expansion. - learn more
- Fluxnium raised a $7M seed round led by Congruent Ventures, with participation from Constellation Technology Ventures and Active Impact Investments. The company will use the funding to develop, test and scale its fiber technology for extracting uranium from seawater, aiming to create a secure domestic alternative to conventional uranium mining. - learn more
- Alexandria Venture Investments participated in BigHat Biosciences’ $75M Series C, co-led by DFJ Growth and Premji Invest, bringing the AI-driven biotech’s total funding to $223M. BigHat will use the capital to expand its autonomous protein-design platform and advance its AI-designed cancer therapies, including BHB810 and BHB299, toward key clinical milestones. - learn more
- Alt Capital participated in Trebellar’s $18M Series A, led by Blossom Capital and joined by Haystack, 1Flourish and Bynd Venture Capital. Trebellar will use the funding to expand its engineering and go-to-market teams and enhance its AI platform, which helps enterprises combine fragmented workplace data to make better real estate decisions. - learn more
- B Capital participated in Precision Neuroscience’s oversubscribed $250M Series D, co-led by Pershing Square, the Ackman Oxman Institute and an undisclosed life sciences fund, bringing the brain-computer interface company’s total funding to $430M. Precision will use the capital to expand clinical trials, advance its Layer 7 brain implant through additional FDA review and build the infrastructure needed for commercialization. - learn more
- Mantis Venture Capital participated in Pilgrim’s $25M seed round, led by Buckley Ventures, which valued the Redwood City defense-biotech startup at $150M. Pilgrim is developing a portable system that monitors the air for viruses and other biological threats, with additional backing from Anthropic leaders, Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam and other technology investors. - learn more
- Starshot Capital participated as a returning investor in Mojave Energy Systems’ $19M Series B, led by Fairtree Elevant Ventures with a significant investment from River Bay Investments. The Sunnyvale company will use the funding to expand manufacturing, grow its sales team and develop new products for its energy-efficient commercial heating, cooling and humidity-control platform. - learn more
- 4th Revolution Capital participated in infiniFi’s $3M-plus funding round, led by Electric Capital and joined by New Form Capital, Generative Ventures, Fasanara Capital and others. The decentralized finance platform will use the capital to launch infiniFi Prime, expand its products through neobanks and consumer finance apps and prepare for its Q4 token generation event. - learn more
- Riot Ventures participated in American Supercritical’s $8M pre-seed round, led by Silent Ventures and joined by Harpoon, Reveille VC, Hillwood, Mana Ventures, Climate Capital and Alumni Ventures. The Denver startup is developing compact systems that use supercritical carbon dioxide to convert gas-turbine waste heat into additional electricity, potentially helping data centers generate up to 50% more power without using more fuel or water. - learn more
- M13 led Baselayer’s $35M Series A, with participation from Torch Capital, Picus Ventures, Afore Capital and Socure executive Matt Thompson. The company will use the funding to expand its identity and risk infrastructure beyond businesses to AI agents, helping financial institutions verify who an agent represents, what it is authorized to do and whether it can be trusted. - learn more
- BAM Ventures participated in Bird&Be’s $13M funding round, which was led by BDC Thrive and BFG Partners and joined by Founder Collective, Rejuvenation Ventures and HSR Ventures. The fertility and wellness brand will use the capital to develop new supplements and at-home diagnostic tests, expand its retail presence and broaden access to evidence-backed reproductive care. - learn more
- March Capital joined Snorkel AI’s $350M Series E as a new investor, participating in a round co-led by Insight Partners and S32 that valued the company at $3.5B. Snorkel will use the funding to expand its platform for creating the specialized datasets and training environments needed to develop and evaluate advanced AI models and agents. - learn more
- Clocktower Technology Ventures is among the investors backing Soteris, which has raised more than $8M in seed funding led by Spider Capital. The Y Combinator-backed insurtech company has emerged from stealth with an AI platform that helps property and casualty insurers identify the profitability and expected losses of individual policies, potentially improving margins without changing rates or staffing. - learn more
- Smash Capital led Firecrawl’s $75M Series B, with participation from Altos Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, Y Combinator, Freestyle and Offline Ventures. Firecrawl will use the capital to expand Alexandria, its new platform that gives AI agents one place to access the live web, specialized indexes and licensed data while compensating the people and organizations supplying that knowledge. - learn more
- ND Capital participated in Ramona’s $25M Series A, which was led by ARCH Venture Partners and joined by Stealthpoint, Fall Line Capital, Hamamatsu, Murchison Capital Partners and Overlap Holdings. Ramona will use the funding to expand production and grow its team as it scales a 24-camera microscope that captures entire biological experiments at cellular resolution, generating richer data for drug discovery and AI models. - learn more
- Chisos Capital participated in Axio BioPharma’s $2.4M pre-seed round alongside Elmstead Partners, the Chemical Angel Network and several angel investors. The Madison-based company will use the funding to deploy its Axio Lattice platform, which connects manufacturing data across pharmaceutical companies and their partners without requiring either side to replace existing systems or relinquish control of its data. - learn more
LA Exits
- Zuma has been acquired by real estate technology company Venn for $50M, bringing its AI leasing tools and engineering team into Venn’s platform. The combined company plans to help multifamily operators automate leasing and eventually expand its AI capabilities into collections, renewals and resident support. - learn more
- GTXN was acquired by digital asset platform Luno for an undisclosed amount, bringing its licensed collection and payout infrastructure into Luno’s operations. GTXN will serve as Luno’s cross-border payments arm, helping enterprise customers move money between developed and emerging markets through a single provider with fewer intermediaries and faster settlement. - learn more
- Podium Entertainment was acquired by private equity firms Shamrock Capital and Flexpoint Ford for more than $400M, with GoldState Music also taking a minority stake. The audiobook and publishing company, which has built a catalog of roughly 15,000 titles by working with independent authors, will retain its existing management team. - learn more
