Silicon Valley just wrote a $60 million check to turn down the sun. Stardust, an Israeli startup founded by two nuclear physicists, convinced some of the world’s wealthiest and most sophisticated investors to fund a plan that sounds like science fiction: dispersing reflective particles in the stratosphere to cool the planet by blocking sunlight. The technology mimics volcanic eruptions, which have temporarily cooled Earth by obscuring the sun with ash and debris. Yet thousands of years before scientists proposed dimming the sun to save humanity, the prophet Joel described a darkened sun as a harbinger of the Day of the Lord. The question is whether billionaire-backed geoengineering represents human ingenuity or the ultimate act of hubris.
Stardust, founded by two nuclear physicists who formerly worked for the Israeli government, raised the funds from a coalition that includes Silicon Valley’s Lowercarbon Capital and Exor, the holding company of Italy’s Agnelli family. Exor controls Stellantis, Ferrari, and Juventus Football Club. Former Facebook executive Matt Cohler and ten other venture capital firms from San Francisco to Berlin also joined the funding round.
The startup has now raised $75 million total since its founding two years ago. The company is registered in Delaware and headquartered outside Tel Aviv, though it is not affiliated with the State of Israel.
Stardust CEO Yanai Yedvab and co-founder Amyad Spector say they have developed a reflective particle that mimics the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions. The company claims its powder is inert and would not harm the ozone layer or create acid rain like sulfur particles from volcanoes. The plan is to disperse these particles in the stratosphere at altitudes of about 11 miles above sea level.
“The investors were putting their trust in the concept of, we need a safe and responsible and controlled option for sunlight reflection, which for me is a very important step forward in the evolution of this field,” Yedvab told POLITICO in an interview at their London office.
The fundraising was led by Lowercarbon Capital, a Wyoming-based firm co-founded by billionaire investor Chris Sacca. The surge in funding comes as political efforts to reduce fossil fuel use have stalled worldwide, while global temperatures continue to climb.
Stardust plans to use the money to begin “controlled outdoor experiments” as soon as April. These tests would release the reflective particles inside a modified plane flying in the stratosphere. The company is seeking government contracts to manufacture, disperse, and monitor the particles at a global scale.
The new funding round is four times larger than Stardust’s initial raise. Yedvab said the company could have raised more money, but only sought what it needed for stratospheric testing. The other investors include Future Ventures, Never Lift Ventures, Starlight Ventures, Nebular, Lauder Partners, Attestor, Kindred Capital, Orion Global Advisors, Future Positive Capital, and Earth.now.
But can humans play God with the sun and escape the consequences foretold in Scripture? The Bible warns of a day when celestial bodies will be darkened. The prophet Joel writes: “And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come” (Joel 2:30–31).
Solar geoengineering, also called solar radiation modification or climate intervention, is drawing fierce criticism from scientists and theologians alike. Critics argue the technology is untested, thinly researched, and mostly unregulated. It could disrupt global weather patterns and trigger geopolitical conflict.
Even advocates of researching solar geoengineering question whether a for-profit company should pursue it. Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School and author of Geoengineering: The Gamble, told POLITICO that Stardust’s business model makes no sense. “They have convinced Silicon Valley venture capitalists to give them a lot of money, and I would say that they shouldn’t have,” Wagner said. “I don’t think it is a reasonable path to suggest that there’s going to be somebody — the U.S. government, another government, whoever — who buys Stardust, buys the intellectual property for a billion bucks and makes the VC investors gazillions.”
The dangers are real. Modifying sunlight could alter global weather patterns, disrupt food supplies, or lead to abrupt warming if it stopped suddenly. It would not address ocean acidification, a major threat to ecosystems driven by carbon overabundance. Scientists fear solar geoengineering could damage the ozone layer, which shields Earth from harmful ultraviolet rays. Implementing the technology in one country could trigger rain and extreme weather across borders.
Another critical concern is “termination shock.” If solar geoengineering is discontinued, temperatures would spike, creating catastrophic problems for future generations who never consented to the practice. These concerns led scientists to launch an online petition for an International Non-Use Agreement on Solar Geoengineering.
The UK government is expected to carry out similar open-air experiments, with the Advanced Research and Invention Agency setting aside $66.5 million for geoengineering research. A test funded by Bill Gates over Sweden was canceled in 2021. Another test in Mexico’s Baja California in 2023 led the Mexican government to ban solar geoengineering experiments entirely.
The parallels to the Tower of Babel are striking. That generation believed they could control heaven and earth, manipulating nature through their own power and wisdom. The Sages teach that the builders of the tower possessed great knowledge, but their fatal flaw was arrogance divorced from Divine purpose. God confused their language so they could no longer coordinate their rebellion against heaven.
The experiment is especially alarming to Bible-believers who may see it as an act of hubris, an attempt by man to bring about the prophecy of Joel: “The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come” (Joel 2:31).
Yuval Ovadia, whose videos on Nibiru have garnered hundreds of thousands of views, is skeptical of scientists teaming up with billionaires to save the world.
“Even when it comes to much worse threats, like nuclear war, the elite and those who can afford it resort to preparing bunkers,” Ovadia told Israel365 News, noting that before crises, sales of bunkers, including luxury bomb shelters, increase drastically. “They think they can control the environment, and they also think they can control men. They think they can keep the populace calm by investing in projects that may or may not solve the problem.”
Ovadia compared geoengineering to the Tower of Babel.
“They think they can control men and God, heavens and the earth,” he said. “Men in that age were on a very high spiritual level. They knew much more practical Kabbalah and could manipulate nature through using lashon hakodesh (holy language). What they could do in the era before the Tower of Babel made today’s science look silly. So God came down and messed up their language so they could no longer manipulate nature.”
“Great deeds are not forbidden, but they require a purity of purpose, an attachment to the Divine,” Ovadia said. “This is a way in which those who only seem good but are actually not are weeded out. Who took part in the Tower of Babel? The very wealthy and the engineers, just like this new project to block out heaven by using dust.”
Ovadia noted that this very scenario was described by autistic children in Jerusalem who are frequently consulted by rabbis for their prophetic ability.
“The children said that scientists act as if they are God, as if they are in charge of the world and its destiny,” Ovadia said. “This is precisely what God hates the most. So he turns their own efforts against them.”
Today’s technocrats, armed with billions in venture capital, believe they can engineer solutions to problems created by their own systems. They think they can dim the sun without consequence, as if the natural order is merely another startup problem awaiting disruption. This is precisely the hubris that brings Divine response.
The Creator established the sun to govern the day and the seasons. When humans attempt to override these fundamental systems, they step into territory that belongs to God alone. The prophecy in Joel describes a darkened sun as a sign of the great and terrible Day of the Lord. It is a warning, not an instruction manual. Those who seek to bring about such conditions through human technology may find themselves hastening judgment rather than averting it. The question is not whether we have the capability to block the sun, but whether we have the wisdom to understand that some powers were never meant to be wielded by mortal hands.