Villainous agri-corp Monsanto, known for playing God with your cornflakes and terrorizing small farmers, just locked down a big acquisition: TechCrunch reports it now owns Climate Corporation, a firm that specializes in "big data" weather prediction. Silicon Valley meets an episode of Captain Planet.

With the US government on its side, the common yeomanry out of the way, and the genome around its pesticide-soaked pinky, all Monsanto has left to accomplish is the subordination of natural phenomena. Climate Corporation—which was backed by some of the biggest names in venture capital—can't change the weather, but with a $1.1 billion price tag, it sure as hell better help Monsanto exploit the weather. Monsanto describes it thusly:

The acquisition will combine The Climate Corporation’s expertise in agriculture analytics and risk-management with Monsanto’s R&D capabilities, and will provide farmers access to more information about the many factors that affect the success of their crops.

Genetically modified crops raised on a massive industrial scale in conjunction with massive data pooling to avoid adverse climate conditions. Delicious! Of course Peter Thiel's Founders Fund was in on the investment action, and will now profit from the Monsanto buy, because he is basically a supervillain—this is like Palantir for rain.

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