How New Mexico’s Oil Windfall Became a $2 Billion VC Bet

AI Summary

A New Mexico startup, Rainmaker, is trialing drone-based cloud seeding using silver iodide to induce precipitation around the Rio Grande river. The company is backed by venture capital funded by New Mexico’s sovereign wealth fund, which benefits from the state’s oil and gas revenues.

A few weeks ago, Augustus Doricko, founder of the cloud-seeding startup Rainmaker, stood in a park on the outskirts of Albuquerque, N.M., flying a drone in the sky. Clad in a khaki field shirt, he looked at home in the desert heat: 97 degrees, not a rain cloud in sight. “The conditions here are great,” said Doricko, 26. “And the demand for water’s huge.” Doricko’s company, which is based in El Segundo, Calif., plans to start a trial program around the Rio Grande river in the coming months, dispatching its drones to induce precipitation with the help of a chemical, silver iodide. That trial is not the only connection Rainmaker has to New Mexico. The startup has received funding from several venture capital firms that have gotten money from New Mexico’s $75 billion sovereign wealth fund. The fund has funneled some $2 billion into VC firms in the last three years as the state’s oil and gas revenues have swelled.