Rainmaker’s Secret AI Plan for Superintelligent Weather

0:00I think a lot of people have talked about energy, and I think energy is a non-negotiable critical input for everything that we're doing. You not just need energy, but you also need water. The TSMC plant in Arizona, they're planning to recycle a lot of the water that they use. TSMC says it will take 4.7 million gallons of water daily to run the first Arizona fab, but it'll bring that demand down to 1 million gallons a day by recycling some 65 % of that. I like to take long showers in California. I like all of the citrus and fruits that we produce in the Central Valley. I like all of our clean hydroelectric baseload.

0:32And so we need lots of water to keep all of those things humming. AI, data centers that need water, re-industrialization, same way that we need energy, same way that we need steel, we need water as a critical input. Extreme weather, drought, other environmental crises around the world are something that humanity has a responsibility to address. I'm sorry to say that the U.S. on the civilian side has fallen significantly behind the rest of the world. I would say the United States has the advantage on radar. We're closing the gap on drone capabilities, but it's no surprise China's ahead there. They seem to be willing to use most any mean to accomplish their end, which is global dominance in every field and sector.

1:07And so a lot of what they're producing, a lot of what they're dispersing is very toxic. And then with respect to cloud seeding and weather modification, like I've said, it's a really old technology. Generally, it actually doesn't work so well. The biggest conflicts that you keep on facing is public perception. The Texas floods is one of the things and you were dragged through the media. So.

1:36Augustus, Alex, welcome to Sorcery. Molly, thank you. Thanks. Well, I know you have some lovely water in front of you. Should we talk about this? Big water, guys. Big water, guys? Why? Well, I mean, I like to take long showers in California. I like all of the citrus and fruits that we produce in the Central Valley. I like all of our clean hydroelectric baseload. And so we need lots of water to keep all of those things humming. AI, data centers that need water, reindustrialization, same way that we need energy, same way that we need steel, we need water as a critical input. And what Alex and I are doing is helping identify where that water is and get it from the atmosphere above us down to the ground to our reservoirs and aquifers.

2:21Augustus, I'm sure everyone knows you because you are a social media figure. You are now a news segment every week. But Alex, we need to talk about you. So could you share more about Atmo and what you're building? Totally. Atmo is the first and leading company in AI for weather. So we started in 2020, and we invented the first deep learning neural networks that could predict the weather. So the same way that LLMs can predict the next word or phrase or paragraph of text, and that's turned into this entire world of AI companies, we did the same thing for the atmosphere where we can make these high dimensional models that predict the next minute, hour, day, week, month of what the atmosphere is going to do.

3:08And that's let us make the most accurate and precise forecast in the world. And we run these every day now for the most important organizations. So we build next generation forecasting systems for the U.S. Air Force, the Navy, and entire sovereign countries. So most recently, we just completed an upgrade to the entire Philippines National Weather Service that increased their level of accuracy by as much as 50 % and made it far more detailed than what they had before, which was quite important because they just had 22 typhoons in one year. Wow. And now you're partnering with Rainmaker. That's exactly right.

3:42So we're combining AI meteorology and the radar verified and drone based cloud seeding that Rainmaker does to do ultra precise enhancement of rain. What are the kinds of, I guess, like performance increases that you get from your systems? Well, this will be the first time that we're actually going out to the field. So we're going to find out experimentally how much more we can get out of it. So I'd say have us back on in a few months and we'll tell you what those results are, which we'll be able to measure in combination with Rainmaker's radars and also model verification from Atmo. So that's partly how they work together.

4:12But in terms of the base increases to the Atmos side of the equation, we've seen models that are up to 100 times higher resolution. So to give you a sense, we're based in San Francisco. And if you took the National Weather Service model for San Francisco, it would treat that whole city roughly on the order of nine pixels. So just picture like nine big kind of blurry zones. We subdivide that into over 10 ,000 zones. And so that's the kind of precision that we're going to be bringing to target precisely when and where to do cloud seeding with Rainmaker. And so the thing that I think the three things that are of most interest in the alliance and the partnership that we have are the following.

4:50So Alex has spoken to targeting, right? Like with our radar, with his models, we cannot find where there is super cool liquid water in cloud. And just as a brief overview for anybody that isn't familiar with cloud seeding yet, it relies on finding small liquid drops in cloud that are too tiny to precipitate. And if they're below zero degrees Celsius, below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, we can disperse a material into the cloud such that the little water droplets freeze onto it, become big, heavy snowflakes, then either fall as snow or melt back into rain. Now, finding where that liquid is in a very turbulent system or in an area where you don't currently have radar coverage, right?

5:29Most of the American West, most of the world does not have meteorological radar coverage. Finding where that is via ultra-precise models radically extends Rainmaker's capability. But more even than that, the two following things I think are of most interest to me, the first of which is scenario modeling. Right. So with our radar, with our probes on our drones, Rainmaker could find super cool liquid water in the past. Right. But maybe there's half a gram per cubic meter of liquid water here. Maybe there's a particular area of advection going on such that if we seed in this location, we actually wouldn't get as much precipitation as we would if we seeded in this location, right?

6:13And what Atmo is going to enable Rainmaker to do is not just help us find where the supercool liquid is, but also map out where in the cloud we could get the ideal outcome from our seeding, right? How can we get as much water on the ground as possible? Or how can we place it in the watershed in the most favorable location, right? We want all of the snow to fall on the tops of the mountains so that that runoff and snow melt lasts as long as possible. So one, I think the targeting is going to be radically improved via the alliance. Two, the scenario modeling to optimize the amount of precipitation that we're getting beyond just what our radar enables us to do.

6:48That's going to be great. And then thirdly, Rainmaker exists. Cloud seeding is viable now because of attribution. Right. Because for the first time in the century since cloud seeding was invented, we can use radar to measure how much of the precipitation is manmade. Right. And that's been done with radar up until this point. If I fly in a zigzag and I only see precipitation in that zigzag flight track, then we know that it's manmade. But beyond that, right, in really complicated systems where there's already lots of reflective stuff like lots of ice and the radar evidence is strong but can be corroborated further and people can be more confident about the amount of anthropogenic water we produce via the modeling that Atmo provides.

7:34That is going to be a great capability as well, just so that our customers are confident that they're getting the amount of water that they're paying for. So those three things, improved targeting, scenario modeling to maximize yield, and then improved attribution so that our customers know what they're paying for. That is all something that Atmo is enabling Rainmaker to do. Right on. Yeah, for real. Yeah, I mean, it all goes to ultimately the types of constituents that we're trying to answer to. You know, this problem worldwide of water scarcity is a sort of live or die issue for political leaders, national leaders of all stripes around the world.

8:08And for some people, in some parts of the world, it's becoming extremely severe, really threatening the existence of cities, entire states in some cases. And so they want to know that there are practical solutions that let them reverse this downward trend. And to do that, they're willing to pay very significant sums, I think, to see that resolved. But to Augustus's point, we have to prove what we're doing and how we're doing it in order to have that attribution and ultimately get paid to provide the service of restoring watersheds. In the global scope of things, how does America rank for their advanced systems for weather?

8:46I mean, you can speak to modeling first. Yeah. I'm sorry to say that the U.S. on the civilian side has fallen significantly behind the rest of the world. So on one hand, on the military side, you know, our DoD partners have been deploying some of the most advanced forecasting models with Atmo over now a period of years. I actually just got here from some work on the East Coast working with some of our Air Force partners. And we've been running with them multi-scale models, some that go down to a specific Air Force base, some a whole region or theory of operations, some are global in nature. And they're using these and utilizing these for all sorts of different applications.

9:24So they're very advanced. Unfortunately, if you go on to the National Weather Service today, none of those models that you see there are AI powered. They're powered by the previous generation systems, which had a lot of limitations. These previous generation models required multi-billion dollar supercomputers. But critically, they're giant, giant stacks of old Fortran code that don't tune and train themselves. So when they make a mistake, like missing Hurricane Sandy in 2015, where other models got it, the only way that gets fixed is if somebody goes in there and hand patches that to fix it the next time through.

9:57So it's a pre-machine learning way of doing it. The post-machine learning way constantly compares what you forecasted with your observations to tune and calibrate. That has yet to come to the U.S. National Weather Service. So we're very, very excited about the possibility of bringing over what we're doing for the military to the public side. But that's very urgently needed, especially considering a lot of the forecasting surprises the country's had to the general public over the last couple of years. And I would say as well, like if it weren't for Atmo, the cuts that are currently underway at NOAA, at the National Science Foundation, at the National Weather Service are further degrading our nation's capabilities to do weather prediction.

10:35And so I'm grateful that Atmo exists to fill that gap. And then with respect to cloud seeding and weather modification itself, like I've said, it's a really old technology. And so in many countries, there's these rudimentary forms of cloud seeding where essentially you take a plane up, you dump a bag of salt out of the side of the aircraft, you hope that it rains more, right? Generally, it actually doesn't work so well. However, Rainmaker's primary competitor, it is not an incumbent, right? There isn't like another cloud seeding company out there that's trying to end scarcity and water scarcity.

11:10It's the Beijing Weather Modification Office through the Chinese Meteorological Administration. And what I would say is it seems to me as though across three critical components of the tech stack, radar-based validation, UAV-based seating itself, and then the materials used, the United States seems to be marginally ahead on radar capabilities. We seem to be better at identifying where there is super cold liquid water in cloud, where there is ice in cloud, the types of hydrometeors that exist there. But on UAVs, we're probably at parity or just behind China, where Rainmaker has a pretty cool drone, the Elijah.

11:49It's the only drone in all of NATO that can fly in severe icing conditions. I'm very pleased with our team and impressed with what we've built there in just about a year's time since preliminary design review. And that's all great. But China is retrofitting the equivalent of their MQ-9 Reaper. So like our most advanced military drones, the equivalent of that in China, the Wing Long 2, they're using for cloud seeding missions. These are very autonomous, very long range, very high endurance, high altitude vehicles with large payloads. That's serious business. Rainmaker's interested in reaching parity with them.

12:24Um, then, uh, with respect to materials, Rainmaker uses silver iodide now, um, silver iodide. That's the material that we disperse. It's crystalline structure is almost identical to ice. So water freezes onto it. Right now, in principle, uh, there could be materials that have water favorably freeze onto them even more so than silver iodide or that attract droplets to them and condense vapor onto them even better than say salt. And the Chinese Meteorological Administration also through these sort of proxies that exist in the Middle East have developed much, much more sophisticated engineered nanoparticles than any United States operation has.

13:05And so I would say the United States has the advantage on radar. We're closing the gap on drone capabilities, but it's no surprise China's ahead there. Their material science for cloud seeding is significantly more advanced, but we're working on now at Rainmaker some alternative nucleation agents that one are proving to be more effective and we'll start to roll those out in 2026, but also are not, you know, like China is an entirely unrestrained country. Like they seem to be willing to do, they seem to be willing to use most any mean to accomplish their end, which is global dominance in every field and sector.

13:44And so a lot of what they're producing, a lot of what they're dispersing is very toxic, both to the environment and agriculture, to humans as well. One, because I care about our nation. And two, just simply like for PR sake as well, the materials that Rainmaker is developing right now are the Rainmaker is developing right now are significantly more safe than anything that China has dispersed thus far. Sorcery is brought to you by Brex, the financial stack trusted by more than 30 ,000 companies, including one in three venture backed startups in the U.S. Nearly 40 percent of startups bail because they run out of cash.

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15:03Start today at brex.com slash sorcery. That's B-R-E-X dot com slash sorcery. Because of that, it seems like one of the biggest conflicts that you keep on facing is public perception. I mean, the Texas floods is one of the things and you were dragged through the media and you actually I mean, you did a world class job and people commended you for that. Are you worried about public perception taking this down and ultimately helping China win? What I've been really relieved by and really grateful for is over the course of the last two weeks, people rightfully were skeptical. They rightfully had questions and concerns about a very consequential technology, weather modification and cloud seeding.

15:51But in going out to the public, transparently talking about our operations, transparently talking about the state of the technology and where it's been in the past, the overwhelming majority of people that we've spoken to, either in public or in the government, have been extraordinarily favorable and open-minded towards us. A lot of people actually came to me in D.C. this past week, just off the street from Texas and otherwise. And we got to pray together both for those affected in Texas and also they were kind enough to do so for us, for our reputation's sake and for our safety's sake. I think I mentioned in some other locations and to you earlier that some people that were misinformed about what cloud seeding is, that believed it to be chemtrails, made threats against me, my company, etc.

16:39We're safe now. We're taken care of. Um, so first of all, I think that the overwhelming majority of Americans have been open-minded and in favor of cloud seeding after hearing us out. This is true of government as well. Some members of the United States government seem to be interested in capitalizing off of a tragic natural disaster for political gain. Um, that's unfortunate. I will always continue to engage in good faith with them. Um, I think that any of their constituents can benefit from cloud seeding. and I hope that they do in the future. Now, I will say as well, with respect to our announcement, adding AI into the mix with the concerns that exist about AI.

17:20That only lowers the concerns of conspiracy theorists, right? Well, no, actually, opposite. Super intelligent weather. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but actually in a way, I think it does answer one of the legitimate concerns of the sort of massive middle that actually thinks about this issue, right? Ultimately, I think most people can see that extreme weather, drought, other environmental crises around the world are something that humanity has a responsibility to address. I think the great majority of people believe that. The question is how we go about addressing them, how we become more responsible stewards of the world, and try to reverse or ameliorate these problems that we have played a role in causing.

18:07And so I think when we say, listen, we want to take the best of computer science, mathematics, physics, apply it to this problem, you know, as Augustus was saying, to do simulation and planning around it, to have the most beneficial possible effect with the highest level of rigorous proof and validation. That's exactly what people want to see. And so the course that we're charting in science and technology to show that time and again and get the reps in in practice, is going to build that muscle that allows people to trust that operations do what they say they're going to do. And ultimately, I think towards a positive vision for what this all looks like, which is that humanity is not helpless in the face of these types of drought and water scarcity events.

18:46We have something we can do and we can prove that we're doing it well. And I think that appeals to the great majority of people that are out there that are concerned about this issue. Yeah, the mode of cloud seeding that we do is called glaciogenic, right? It's glaciogenic or orographic wintertime precipitation enhancement. That's a bunch of gobbledygook words, but simply put what that means is like, think of glacier, right? Think of freezing. We freeze water drops in cloud into snowflakes. Um, that means that we're actually better at making snow than anything else. Um, if it's sufficiently warm beneath the cloud, then that snow can melt back into rain.

19:26Rainmaker currently can't just because the snowflakes that we make are too small. We can't make hail. We can't suppress hail either. But a bunch of cloud seeding programs in the past have tried to do not just precipitation enhancement, but either severe weather mitigation or hail mitigation. Those processes are really, really, really complicated, but ostensibly they're just physics problems, right? They're just physics or chemistry problems. And so insofar as they are physics and chemistry problems, we're bound by the laws of physics, but we can, with the correct inputs, with the correct sensors, modify those weather systems as well.

20:08Beyond Rainmaker's current capability, but entirely possible and has been attempted in the past, right? With Project Storm Fury, the United States Weather Bureau, in conjunction with the Air Force, was flying out into the Atlantic to attempt to mitigate the severity of hurricanes. They did so back in the, what, 70s, 60s, 70s. The problem then was this. You know, the theory was that you could precipitate water out of the cloud to mitigate flooding and also because freezing is exothermic. So when you freeze these little drops into snowflakes, you release some heat, you expand the area, but reduce the velocity of the winds of the storm.

20:50It would also do less wind damage. That is something that the United States government has attempted in the past. It is something that perhaps with a prayerful mindset and appropriate government oversight and regulation to ensure it's not just anybody with a biplane trying to do something like this. I think that it's reasonable to believe that the U.S. government would do in the future.

21:38can accelerate your business growth. To learn more, visit turing.com slash sorcery, spelt S-O-U-R-C-E-R-Y. That's turing.com slash sorcery. We're at re-industrialized, so you're going to get the re-industrialized question. What is, let's start with Rainmaker, what is Rainmaker's role in re-industrialization? You know, I mentioned earlier, I think a lot of people have talked about energy, and I think energy is a non-negotiable critical input for everything that we're doing, right? Whether it's advanced manufacturing or just simple steel production, right? More base components to the economy, whether it is for data centers or for agricultural output.

22:20You not just need energy, but you also need water, right? And so what Rainmaker is interested in doing first and foremost is providing as critical an input as energy or minerals, water to all sectors of the economy. And so the reason why we sell primarily business to government right now is because it's not just one individual farm that benefits from more precipitation over that farm, right? It's not just the hydroelectric utility that has a dam on the river that supplies the town. It is everybody in the economy and in the vicinity of that water that benefits. And when I say vicinity, I mean like more snow in Colorado, more snow in Utah.

23:01It doesn't just benefit Utah and Colorado. That benefits everybody downstream in the Colorado River, right? So Los Angeles only exists because of water supply from the Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, like I said, Utah, they all need more, more precipitation in the upper Rockies. And then also the states in the vicinity of the states that we're sitting in that aren't even in the Colorado Basin benefit when there's more snow in the Colorado Basin. So, for example, the Platte River, right, which flows from Colorado into Nebraska, that is pretty radically depleted because Colorado and its constituents and its people and its industry needs water from the upper Platte.

23:48But if you can produce more water in Colorado, then you can actually offset demand from folks in Colorado and industry in Colorado such that people in Nevada or in Nebraska, excuse me, get more. So I think that there's almost this troublesome angle in Rainmaker's sales cycle, which is like, well, who do we sell to? Everybody is a buyer of water. Every sector needs more water. And so this critical input, this base layer is what we're interested in providing. That's the thing that we can do to facilitate every other sector of the economy, particularly manufacturing, growing and re-industrialization writ large.

24:27I think to make it a little bit more tangible, could you just share the use cases? Yeah, 100%. 100%. So you mean for water, essentially? So we can say this. Cloud Zine produces more water. That's what our bag is. So then who is using that water? So for one, as long as we're using hydroelectric, which until either nuclear or solar come online in significantly greater scale than they already have. Like clean base power is something that we need more of. And so hydroelectric, more snow on mountains that melts and runs off into those dams that then power factories, that is like one immediate, very tangible use case.

25:10If you are cooling a data center, some of that is done just with air. Some of that is done with like helium experimentally, but you need water, right? To cool these data centers. If you're trying to make chips, the TSMC plant in Arizona, they're recycling a lot of the water. They're planning to recycle a lot of the water that they use. But at the very highest end, you're going to see like a 90 % recycling rate. And these are enormous fabs. And so you need to produce more water, not just so that we can create the new chip fab, but also so that in building that chip fab, like people still have water flowing into their residences and can take showers, right?

25:52Because one complicated component of re-industrialization is finite resource allocation, right? Like we want more factories in America, a hundred percent. But we don't necessarily want to sacrifice other sectors if we don't need to in service of re-industrialization. So I would prefer one, that we produce the requisite water for advanced manufacturing, for stable baseload power, but we do so while maintaining our agricultural production, right? Because one option that we could pursue theoretically, that the nation could pursue, is building a bunch of fabs, building a bunch of steel plants, building a bunch of different kinds of manufacturing facilities, and then depriving all of the new residential growth in the American West or agricultural production in the American West.