Stardust Solutions

Stardust Solutions is developing a proprietary reflective particle for stratospheric aerosol injection — spraying particles into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight and cool the planet. They claim the particles are "bio-safe," "chemically inert," and made of "components abundant in nature."

The problem: nobody outside the company knows what the particles actually are. The chemical composition is secret and patent-pending. No peer-reviewed research has been published. No external scientists can evaluate their safety claims because the data doesn't exist publicly.

Their 2023 pitch deck proposed "annually dispersing ~1 million tons of sun-reflecting particles" to create "~1% extra cloud coverage" and called it the "only technologically feasible solution" to climate change.

Stardust expects nations to pay it more than a billion dollars a year to launch aircraft into the stratosphere and disperse their proprietary particles. Target customers: governments. Target deployment: as early as 2035. The revenue model is a perpetual government contract — once deployment starts, it can never stop.

This is because of termination shock: if stratospheric aerosol injection begins at scale and then stops, temperatures would spike rapidly — potentially faster than the original warming. Deployment scenarios involve continuous particle injection for hundreds of years. Any government customer is locked in forever.

A for-profit company is seeking patent protections on atmosphere-altering technology that, once deployed, creates permanent dependency on whoever holds the IP. The entire planet is affected. The question is not just scientific — it's about who gets to control the global thermostat.

Stardust plans to begin "outdoor contained experiments" starting April 2026 — weeks from now. The tests would release their proprietary reflective particles inside a modified plane flying at approximately 11 miles (18 km) above sea level, in the stratosphere. They describe this as "contained" and "non-dispersive."

The tests are planned in Israel (headquarters near Tel Aviv, in Ness Ziona). The exact location has not been publicly disclosed.

• Zero public consultation conducted
• Zero published safety data
• No environmental or health impact assessment made public
• No regulatory approval process reported
• No Israeli government statement permitting or opposing the tests
• Israel is party to the Convention on Biological Diversity, which has a moratorium on geoengineering (reaffirmed at COP16)

In Q1 2025, Stardust hired Holland & Knight — a major K Street law and lobbying firm — to lobby Congress. Holland & Knight failed to publicly disclose the relationship as required by federal law.

When E&E News/Politico broke the story in November 2025, Holland & Knight spokesperson Olivia Hoch called the non-disclosure a "clerical error" and "inadvertent." The firm refused to say how much Stardust paid or what specific issues were lobbied on.

CEO Yedvab claimed they were lobbying "for oversight" of their own industry. But the company simultaneously refused to publish its particle composition, refused public consultation, and ignored its own governance consultant's recommendations.

In 2024, Stardust hired Janos Pasztor — a veteran climate diplomat, former UN Assistant Secretary-General on Climate Change, and founder of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative — as an independent governance consultant. Notably, Pasztor donated his entire consulting fee to UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) rather than keep it.

• Pasztor recommended: publish a public website, develop a code of conduct, increase transparency, engage stakeholders, appoint an advisory group, reach out to scientific evaluators
• Stardust's website was hidden from search engines for months
• The agreed-upon code of conduct was never published — replaced with watered-down "Guiding Principles"
• No public consultation was conducted
• No research data was published
• No advisory group was appointed

The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) has published multiple statements condemning Stardust, calling their approach a "reckless geoengineering gamble" that "threatens to put humanity on a path of no return to perpetual dependency on this extreme technology."

CIEL points out that deployment is constrained by international customary law and prohibited under a longstanding moratorium at the Convention on Biological Diversity — which Israel is a party to. The moratorium was reaffirmed by consensus at CBD COP16 in Colombia.

Over 600 scientists worldwide have signed the Solar Geoengineering Non-Use Agreement, calling for a halt to commercial solar geoengineering deployment. The academic community is broadly critical of for-profit SAI.

All three Stardust co-founders come from Israel's nuclear weapons establishment — specifically the Negev Nuclear Research Center (Dimona), Israel's most classified nuclear facility, and the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC).

The Negev Nuclear Research Center was built in 1958 with French assistance under secret agreements. While officially for "general research purposes," its actual purpose is the production of nuclear materials for Israel's estimated 80-400 nuclear weapons. Israel maintains a policy of "strategic ambiguity" and has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. When U.S. inspectors visited, Israel reportedly installed temporary false walls and other concealment devices — the inspectors told the U.S. government their inspections were "useless."

This institutional background is essential context. These are not people who come from a culture of open science — they come from a culture of extreme secrecy by design. The opacity of Stardust is not an accident.

Stardust has raised $75 million in under three years — more than double any other geoengineering company. Their $60M Series A (October 2025) is the largest geoengineering investment in history. They raise at roughly $30M/year compared to an industry average of $7-10M/year.

The seed round ($15M, early 2024) came primarily from AWZ Ventures — a Canadian-Israeli VC with a unique partnership with MAFAT, the Israeli Ministry of Defense's R&D arm. AWZ's advisory board includes a former Mossad Chief of Intelligence, a former Unit 8200 commander, and former directors of the CIA, FBI, and MI5. Their first fund ($82.5M) was a joint fund with the Israeli Ministry of Defence.

When confronted about defense connections, Stardust stated it "receives no funding from the Israeli Defense Ministry" and "has no connection to the Israeli government." This is technically about direct government funding — AWZ's relationship with the Defense Ministry is acknowledged on AWZ's own website.