On Tuesday, Make Sunsets announced it had completed three balloon launches near Reno, Nevada, each of which contained less than 10 grams of sulfur dioxide, which is the most commonly sited aerosol particle discussed in conversations about solar geoengineering. Two of the balloons launched also had location trackers, and one had a camera, too.
The idea of solar geoengineering has been around for decades and generally refers to spraying aerosol particles into the upper atmosphere in order to reflect the sun’s rays away from earth and back to space, cooling the earth and temporarily mitigating the effects of climate change.
Essentially, solar geoengineering is mimicking what happens when a volcano erupts, and it’s known to work. When Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines released thousands of tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere in the 1991 eruption, the global temperature of the earth was lowered on average by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Solar geoengineering is not a solution to climate change, and nobody who studies it rigorously suggests it should be. It’s a temporary stopgap measure.
In addition, while releasing sulfur dioxide particles will cool the earth quickly and relatively inexpensively, it’s also dangerous. Injecting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere could damage the ozone layer, cause respiratory illness and create acid rain.
But as the effects of climate change become more obvious, people are beginning to take the idea more seriously.
The White House is coordinating a five-year research plan into solar geoengineering, the quadrennial U.N.-backed Montreal Protocol assessment report included an entire chapter addressing stratospheric aerosol injection (more colloquially called solar geoengineering), and Dustin Moskovitz, a co-founder of Facebook, is funding solar geoengineering research via his philanthropic organization, Open Philanthropy.
While momentum is building, there isn’t any international governance rules about how to study and potentially regulate the idea.
Luke Iseman, a serial inventor and the former director of hardware at Y Combinator, launched Make Sunsets in October in an effort to push that envelope. San Mateo-headquartered venture capital firm BoostVC invested $500,000 in the startup and Iseman brought in a co-founder, Andrew Song.
The launches in Nevada earlier in February occurred at the Rancho San Rafael Regional Park in Reno, , where an annual hot-air balloon festival takes place, Iseman told CNBC.
They chose Nevada “because it’s in the U.S., we’re very confident we know and followed all applicable rules, know the terrain well from past adventures, and, we didn’t want to interfere with a friend’s efforts to get a marine cloud brightening project permitted in California,” Iseman told CNBC.
The Nevada launch was previously detailed by Time reporters, who were there. It was a shoe-string MacGyver-ed event orchestrated out of a hotel room, with a grill and weather balloon equipment. But, as evidenced by the images embedded below, shared with CNBC by Make Sunsets, the balloons lifted off.
Make Sunsets team is filling sulfur dioxide in a bag preparing for launch.
Photo courtesy Make Sunsets
Make Sunsets team is weighing the bag filled with sulfur dioxide gas in a bag preparing for launch.
Photo courtesy Make Sunsets
Make Sunsets is filling the balloon with helium here.
Photo courtesy Make Sunsets
Here, founder Luke Iseman is preparing to release the weather balloon filled with sulfur dioxide and helium into the atmosphere. Make Sunsets says this is the first deployment of SAI, or stratospheric aerosol injection, another and more specific name for solar geoengineering.
Photo courtesy Make Sunsets
Luke Iseman, the founder of Make Sunsets, is about to launch a weather balloon filled with sulfur dioxide and helium into the air in Nevada.
Photo courtesy Make Sunsets
Make Sunsets launching a weather balloon filled with sulfur dioxide and helium into the air in Nevada.
Photo courtesy Make Sunsets
A view from the Make Sunsets balloon launched in Nevada.
Photo courtesy Make Sunsets
A view from the Make Sunsets balloon launched in Nevada.
Photo courtesy Make Sunsets
Iseman has both idealistic and practical goals.
“Most importantly: We need to cool earth to save millions of lives, hundreds of thousands of species, and buy the time we need to decarbonize,” Iseman told CNBC.
To make the business sustainable, Make Sunsets is selling cooling credits, which gives companies and individuals a way to offset the effects of their carbon emissions. But the startup has yet to deliver.
“We have 2,790 cooling credits ordered by 58 paying customers that we haven’t yet delivered,” Iseman told CNBC. “On one hand, we’re working hard on a controversial project to cool earth. On the other, we’re a startup with the same basic challenge as any other: get customers to pay more for what we’re selling than it costs to make it.”
Make Sunsets said it made the FAA aware that it was releasing a balloon.
The FAA provided the following statement: “The FAA has comprehensive regulations for safely operating unmanned free balloons. Among other things, the regulations require the balloon to be equipped so it can be tracked by radar, and the operator to notify the FAA prior to and at the time of launch, monitor and record the balloon’s course, make position reports to the FAA as requested, and notify the FAA when the balloon begins its descent and its expected trajectory.”
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated what the balloons contained. All three of them had sulfur dioxide.
A Thanksgiving week rally couldn’t put all three major indexes in the green for November. The S & P 500 gained nearly 4% for the week, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average added more than 3% — a strong enough showing for each to eke out gains for the month. It extends their streak of winning months to seven. And while the Nasdaq Composite ended the week higher by more than 4%, it wasn’t enough to overcome selling earlier in the month triggered by valuation concerns about the artificial intelligence trade. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell roughly 2% in November, ending its seven-month winning streak. .SPX YTD mountain S & P 500 (SPX) year-to-date performance There were a couple of bright spots in our portfolio during the holiday-shortened trading week. Apple shares notched three consecutive all-time highs this week, starting on Monday and ending on Wednesday. The stock has been buoyed by positive demand signs for Apple’s iPhone 17 series. Counterpoint Research data on Wednesday showed that Apple is on track to dethrone Samsung as the world’s top smartphone maker this year — an achievement the iPhone maker hasn’t seen in over a decade. Overall, Counterpoint analysts expect Apple to capture 19.4% of the global smartphone market in 2025, compared with Samsung’s expected 18.7%. The stock rose further on Friday, closing the week with a nearly 3% gain. Broadcom secured all-time record closes during every trading session this week. The stock’s been up as Wall Street starts to see the chipmaker as an ancillary play to Alphabet ‘s growing AI dominance. As Google began rolling out its latest AI model, investors see benefits for Broadcom as a co-designer of its specialized chips, called tensor processing units (TPUs). Media reports earlier in the week of Meta Platforms considering Google’s TPUs for its data centers in 2027 added fuel to Broadcom’s run. That’s because Alphabet’s AI expansion could drive more sales for Broadcom’s crucial networking and custom chips businesses, which was a key reason the Club started a position in the stock. Shares of Broadcom advanced more than 18% week to date. Fellow chipmaker Nvidia went the other way, with shares hitting a nearly three-month low on Tuesday as those same reports highlighted how some big tech companies are looking for alternatives to Nvidia’s chips. But Jim Cramer recommended staying the course , and called the stock dip a buying opportunity for new investors. After all, Nvidia still dominates the extremely lucrative AI chip market. “The demand is insatiable for Nvidia,” Jim said Tuesday. Shares fell 1% week to date. NVDA YTD mountain Nvidia (NVDA) year-to-date performance And while we didn’t see any earnings from the portfolio this past week, Dick’s Sporting Goods ‘ quarterly report was great news for Club holding Nike . Jim called the retail stock a buy on Tuesday after Dick’s announced plans to close several Foot Locker locations during its third-quarter earnings call. “Nike is a buy off of Dick’s problems,” Jim said. Management’s remarks indicated that Nike’s relationship with the retail giant has been improving, a positive sign for Nike’s turnaround story. “They’re moving in the right direction,” Ed Stack, executive chairman of Dick’s Sporting Goods, told “Squawk on the Street,” after the company’s earnings were released. He cited a strong performance from Nike’s running line. “If you take a look at what they did with their running construct, what they did with Pegasus, what they did with Vomero, what they did with Structure, this running concept has done extremely well on the Dick’s side, and where it’s been put into Foot Locker stores, it’s done really well there too.” Nike stock jumped nearly 3% week to date. NKE YTD mountain Nike (NKE) year-to-date peformance Trades Finally, we executed two trades during the shortened holiday trading week. On Monday, the Club bought more Palo Alto Networks shares on the cybersecurity company’s overblown post-earnings decline. We saw the weakness as an opportunity, given that Palo Alto delivered a beat-and-raise third quarter that topped estimates for every single key metric. The Nov. 19 report showed that momentum in Palo Alto’s “platformization” strategy of bundling its products and services remains promising. Deals from Palo Alto make us even more bullish on the stock. The company announced plans to buy cloud management and monitoring company Chronosphere for $3.35 billion. Management’s acquisition of identity-security leader CyberArk was approved by shareholders on Nov. 13 and is expected to close in the third quarter of fiscal year 2026. “Palo Alto Networks is setting itself apart in the AI era by adding two platforms just as their respective markets hit key inflection points,” Jeff Marks, the Investing Club’s director of portfolio analysis, wrote in a trade alert. We added to our Procter & Gamble position on Tuesday, our second purchase of the consumer goods giant since starting a position on Nov. 18. The thesis: Shares will benefit from any rotation out of Big Tech and into more economically resilient companies. Basically, if AI spending lets up or the U.S. economy slows down, defensive stocks like P & G should shine. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
CEO of Palantir Technologies Alex Karp attends the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S., July 15, 2025.
Shares of the software analytics provider dropped 16% for their worst month since August 2023 as investors dumped AI stocks due to valuation fears. Meanwhile, famed investor Michael Burry doubled down on the artificial intelligence trade and bet against the company.
Palantir started November off on a high note.
The Denver-based company topped Wall Street’s third-quarter earnings and revenue expectations. Palantir also posted its second-straight $1 billion revenue quarter, but high valuation concerns contributed to a post-print selloff.
In a note to clients, Jefferies analysts called Palantir’s valuation “extreme” and argued investors would find better risk-reward in AI names such as Microsoft and Snowflake. Analysts at RBC Capital Markets raised concerns about the company’s “increasingly concentrated growth profile,” while Deutsche Bank called the valuation “very difficult to wrap our heads around.”
Adding fuel to the post-earnings selloff was the revelation that Burry is betting against Palantir and AI chipmaker Nvidia. Burry, who is widely known for predicting the housing crisis that occurred in 2008 and the portrayal of him in the film “The Big Short,” later accused hyperscalers of artificially boosting earnings.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp vocally hit the front lines, appearing twice in one week on CNBC, where he accused Burry of “market manipulation” and called the investor’s actions “egregious.”
“The idea that chips and ontology is what you want to short is bats— crazy,” Karp told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Despite the vicious selloff, Palantir has notched some deal wins this month. That included a multiyear contract with consulting firm PwC to speed up AI adoption in the U.K. and a deal with aircraft engine maintenance company FTAI.
But those announcements did little to shake off valuation worries that have haunted all AI-tied companies in November.
Across the board, investors have viciously ditched the high-priced group, citing fears of stretched valuations and a bubble.
In November, Nvidia pulled back more than 12%, while Microsoft and Amazon dropped about 5% each. Quantum computing names such as Rigetti Computing and D-Wave Quantum have shed more than a third of their value.
Apple and Alphabet were the only Magnificent 7 stocks to end the month with gains.
Sill, questions linger over Palantir’s valuation, and those worries aren’t a new concern.
Even after its steep price drop, the company’s stock trades at 233 times forward earnings. By comparison, Nvidia and Alphabet traded at about 38 times and 30 times, respectively, at Friday’s close.
Karp, who has long defended the company, didn’t miss an opportunity to clap back at his critics, arguing in a letter to shareholders that the company is making it feasible for everyday investors to attain rates of return once “limited to the most successful venture capitalists in Palo Alto.”
“Please turn on the conventional television and see how unhappy those that didn’t invest in us are,” Karp said during an earnings call. “Enjoy, get some popcorn. They’re crying. We are every day making this company better, and we’re doing it for this nation, for allied countries.”
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Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:
1. Down and out
Stock futures trading was halted this morning after a data center “cooling issue” took down several Chicago Mercantile Exchange services. Individual stocks were still trading before the bell, while the CME said futures indexes and options trading would open fully at 8:30 a.m. Follow live markets updates here.
The stock market has rebounded during the holiday-shortened trading week. But the three major indexes are still on pace to end November’s trading month — which ends with today’s closing bell — in the red. The Dow and S&P 500 are poised to snap six-month winning streaks, while the Nasdaq Composite is on track to see its first negative month in eight.
Today’s trading session ends early at 1 p.m. ET.
2. Shopping and dropping
A Black Friday sale sign is displayed in a shop window at an outlet mall in Carlsbad, California, U.S., Nov. 25, 2025.
Mike Blake | Reuters
Black Friday was once considered the biggest in-person shopping day of the year, drawing huge crowds to stores in search of bargains. But while millions are still expected to partake in the occasion, it’s not what it used to be.
Here’s what to know:
In the past six years, online sales have outpaced brick-and-mortar spending on Black Friday. Data shows in-person foot traffic has been mostly flat over the last few years, as well.
No matter where they make their purchases, shoppers are also skeptical that they’re getting the best deals.
As CNBC’s Gabrielle Fonrouge reports, the shift has meant a change in strategy for many of the retail industry’s biggest names. Some have started offering their holiday sales earlier in the season, while others are spacing out their promotions.
Deloitte reported that the average consumer will shell out $622 between Nov. 27 and Dec. 1, a decrease of 4% from last year.
Even as the day of deals loses its allure, AT&T found that Gen Z participates the most, while their older counterparts do their shopping closer to Christmas.
3. AI comeback
Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images
Alphabet has been a notable exception to the recent tech downturn. Shares of the Google parent have surged more than 13% this month as Wall Street sees the company as an AI leader.
Alphabet began the month by announcing its latest tensor processing units, or TPUs, called Ironwood. Last week, the company launched its latest AI model, Gemini 3, which caught positive attention from Silicon Valley heavyweights.
Shares of the stock are now up close to 70% this year, making it the best-performer within megacap tech. But experts told CNBC’s Jennifer Elias that Alphabet’s lead in the competitive AI market is marginal and could be hard to hold onto.
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4. Tech’s tug of wars
Alibaba announced plans to release a pair of smart glasses powered by its AI models. The Quark AI Glasses are Alibaba’s first foray into the smart glasses product category.
Alibaba‘s AI-powered smart glasses went on sale yesterday. With its new wearable tech offering, the Chinese tech company is going up against major players — namely Meta, which unveiled its smart glasses with Ray Ban in September.
Meanwhile, Counterpoint Research found Apple is poised to ship more smartphones than Samsung this year for the first time in 14 years. Apple is also poised to boast a larger market share, driven by strong iPhone 17 sales.
5. From Seoul to Los Angeles
Carly Xie looks over facial mask items at the Face Shop, which specializes in Korean cosmetics, in San Francisco, April 15, 2015.
Avila Gonzalez | San Francisco Chronicle | Hearst Newspapers | Getty Images
American shoppers are increasingly looking to South Korea for their cosmetics. NielsenIQ found U.S. sales of so-called “K-beauty” products are slated to surge more than 37% this year to above $2 billion.
Retailers ranging from beauty product hubs Ulta and Sephora to big-box chains Walmart and Costco are jumping on the trend. On top of that, Olive Young — aka the “Sephora of Seoul” — is opening its first U.S. store in Los Angeles next year.
The Daily Dividend
Here are some stories worth circling back to over the weekend:
— CNBC’s Chloe Taylor, Gabrielle Fonrouge, Laya Neelakandan, Jessica Dickler, Sarah Min, Sean Conlon, Jennifer Elias, Arjun Kharpal and Luke Fountain contributed to this report. Josephine Rozzelle edited this edition.