His reporting on a Stanford University president put Theo Baker on the map, but his upcoming book may cement his reputation as the rare young journalist willing to challenge Silicon Valley’s startup machine.
Read more For the first time, developers can embed Google’s Deep Research tool, based on Gemini 3 Pro, into their own apps.
Read more Despite launching as a humanoid robot designed to help consumers around the house, 1X’s Neo robots are heading to industrial use cases.
Read more Graham & Walker’s Leslie Feinzaig and XYZ Venture’s Ross Fubini share the secrets for founders — and VCs — to make the most of the current fast pace of dealmaking.
Read more This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
Solar geoengineering startups are getting serious
Solar geoengineering aims to manipulate the climate by bouncing sunlight back into space. In theory, it could ease global warming. But as interest in the idea grows, so do concerns about potential consequences.
A startup called Stardust Solutions recently raised a $60 million funding round, the largest known to date for a geoengineering startup. My colleague James Temple has a new story out about the company, and how its emergence is making some researchers nervous.
So far, the field has been limited to debates, proposed academic research, and—sure—a few fringe actors to keep an eye on. Now things are getting more serious. So what does it mean for geoengineering, and for the climate? Read the full story.
—Casey Crownhart
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.
If you’re interested in reading more about solar geoengineering, check out:
+ Why the for-profit race into solar geoengineering is bad for science and public trust. Read the full story.
+ Why we need more research—including outdoor experiments—to make better-informed decisions about such climate interventions.
+ The hard lessons of Harvard’s failed geoengineering experiment, which was officially terminated last year. Read the full story.
+ How this London nonprofit became one of the biggest backers of geoengineering research.
+ The technology could alter the entire planet. These groups want every nation to have a say.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 OpenAI is being sued for wrongful death
By the estate of a woman killed by her son after he engaged in delusion-filled conversations with ChatGPT. (WSJ $)
+ The chatbot appeared to validate Stein-Erik Soelberg’s conspiratorial ideas. (WP $)
+ It’s the latest in a string of wrongful death legal actions filed against chatbot makers. (ABC News)
2 ICE is tracking pregnant immigrants through specifically-developed smartwatches
They’re unable to take the devices off, even during labor. (The Guardian)
+ Pregnant and postpartum women say they’ve been detained in solitary confinement. (Slate $)
+ Another effort to track ICE raids has been taken offline. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Meta’s new AI hires aren’t making friends with the rest of the company
Tensions are rife between the AGI team and other divisions. (NYT $)
+ Mark Zuckerberg is keen to make money off the company’s AI ambitions. (Bloomberg $)
+ Meanwhile, what’s life like for the remaining Scale AI team? (Insider $)
4 Google DeepMind is building its first materials science lab in the UK
It’ll focus on developing new materials to build superconductors and solar cells. (FT $)
5 The new space race is to build orbital data centers
And Blue Origin is winning, apparently. (WSJ $)
+ Plenty of companies are jostling for their slice of the pie. (The Verge)
+ Should we be moving data centers to space? (MIT Technology Review)
6 Inside the quest to find out what causes Parkinson’s
A growing body of work suggests it may not be purely genetic after all. (Wired $)
7 Are you in TikTok’s cat niche?
If so, you’re likely to be in these other niches too. (WP $)
8 Why do our brains get tired? 
Researchers are trying to get to the bottom of it. (Nature $)
9 Microsoft’s boss has built his own cricket app 
Satya Nadella can’t get enough of the sound of leather on willow. (Bloomberg $)
10 How much vibe coding is too much vibe coding?
One journalist’s journey into the heart of darkness. (Rest of World)
+ What is vibe coding, exactly? (MIT Technology Review)
Quote of the day
“I feel so much pain seeing his sad face…I hope for a New Year’s miracle.”
—A child in Russia sends a message to the Kremlin-aligned Safe Internet League explaining the impact of the country’s decision to block access to the wildly popular gaming platform Roblox on their brother, the Washington Post reports.
One more thing
Why it’s so hard to stop tech-facilitated abuse
After Gioia had her first child with her then husband, he installed baby monitors throughout their home—to “watch what we were doing,” she says, while he went to work. She’d turn them off; he’d get angry. By the time their third child turned seven, Gioia and her husband had divorced, but he still found ways to monitor her behavior.
One Christmas, he gave their youngest a smartwatch. Gioia showed it to a tech-savvy friend, who found that the watch had a tracking feature turned on. It could be turned off only by the watch’s owner—her ex.
Gioia is far from alone. In fact, tech-facilitated abuse now occurs in most cases of intimate partner violence—and we’re doing shockingly little to prevent it. Read the full story.
—Jessica Klein
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)
+ The New Yorker has picked its best TV shows of 2025. Let the debate commence!
+ Check out the winners of this year’s Drone Photo Awards.
+ I’m sorry to report you aren’t half as intuitive as you think you are when it comes to deciphering your dog’s emotions.
+ Germany’s “home of Christmas” sure looks magical.
Solar geoengineering aims to manipulate the climate by bouncing sunlight back into space. In theory, it could ease global warming. But as interest in the idea grows, so do concerns about potential consequences.
A startup called Stardust Solutions recently raised a $60 million funding round, the largest known to date for a geoengineering startup. My colleague James Temple has a new story out about the company, and how its emergence is making some researchers nervous.
So far, the field has been limited to debates, proposed academic research, and—sure—a few fringe actors to keep an eye on. Now things are getting more serious. What does it mean for geoengineering, and for the climate?
Researchers have considered the possibility of addressing planetary warming this way for decades. We already know that volcanic eruptions, which spew sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, can reduce temperatures. The thought is that we could mimic that natural process by spraying particles up there ourselves.
The prospect is a controversial one, to put it lightly. Many have concerns about unintended consequences and uneven benefits. Even public research led by top institutions has faced barriers—one famous Harvard research program was officially canceled last year after years of debate.
One of the difficulties of geoengineering is that in theory a single entity, like a startup company, could make decisions that have a widespread effect on the planet. And in the last few years, we’ve seen more interest in geoengineering from the private sector.
Three years ago, James broke the story that Make Sunsets, a California-based company, was already releasing particles into the atmosphere in an effort to tweak the climate.
The company’s CEO Luke Iseman went to Baja California in Mexico, stuck some sulfur dioxide into a weather balloon, and sent it skyward. The amount of material was tiny, and it’s not clear that it even made it into the right part of the atmosphere to reflect any sunlight.
But fears that this group or others could go rogue and do their own geoengineering led to widespread backlash. Mexico announced plans to restrict geoengineering experiments in the country a few weeks after that news broke.
You can still buy cooling credits from Make Sunsets, and the company was just granted a patent for its system. But the startup is seen as something of a fringe actor.
Enter Stardust Solutions. The company has been working under the radar for a few years, but it has started talking about its work more publicly this year. In October, it announced a significant funding round, led by some top names in climate investing. “Stardust is serious, and now it’s raised serious money from serious people,” as James puts it in his new story.
That’s making some experts nervous. Even those who believe we should be researching geoengineering are concerned about what it means for private companies to do so.
“Adding business interests, profit motives, and rich investors into this situation just creates more cause for concern, complicating the ability of responsible scientists and engineers to carry out the work needed to advance our understanding,” write David Keith and Daniele Visioni, two leading figures in geoengineering research, in a recent opinion piece for MIT Technology Review.
Stardust insists that it won’t move forward with any geoengineering until and unless it’s commissioned to do so by governments and there are rules and bodies in place to govern use of the technology.
But there’s no telling how financial pressure might change that, down the road. And we’re already seeing some of the challenges faced by a private company in this space: the need to keep trade secrets.
Stardust is currently not sharing information about the particles it intends to release into the sky, though it says it plans to do so once it secures a patent, which could happen as soon as next year. The company argues that its proprietary particles will be safe, cheap to manufacture, and easier to track than the already abundant sulfur dioxide. But at this point, there’s no way for external experts to evaluate those claims.
As Keith and Visioni put it: “Research won’t be useful unless it’s trusted, and trust depends on transparency.”
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.
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