Diamond Foundry, a Santa Clara-based startup company, is recently gaining popularity and is sparking widespread interest from investors as it claims to produce hundreds of real diamonds in just a span of two weeks. Created by Nanosolar founder Martin Roscheisen, the company grows high-quality diamonds, which can weigh up to nine carats each, in a laboratory sans the exploitation of the mining industry.
Since the diamond industry has been stained by human rights abuses, child labor, ecological destruction, cartel-like pricing and untraceable provenance, Diamond Foundry sought the help of science and technology to create synthetic diamonds that are pure as natural ones at the same time ethically and morally pure as well.
"Diamond Foundry was founded with the goal of reinventing the $100B diamond industry from 'mine to finger' by setting a new standard for social and environmental good," the company said on its website.
So, how can Diamond Foundry make hundreds of diamonds in just two weeks? According to Business Insider, the company starts with a real diamond as a seed crystal. By using a super-heated plasma, they build more atoms onto this seed, layer by layer, until they have a diamond. The gems are grown in chemical reactors that can reach a scorching 8,000 degrees Celsius, which is hotter than the surface of the sun of about 5,500 degrees Celsius.
In addition, Materialytics chief scientist Catherine McManus also revealed why Diamond Foundry is unique from other synthetic diamond manufacturers. McManus said the company seems to be using a combination of HPHT (high-pressure high-temperature) and CVD (chemical vapor deposition) techniques for making diamonds.
Meanwhile, Diamond Foundry's breakthrough has convinced actor Leonardo DiCaprio as well ten Silicon Valley tech billionaires to invest. As a matter of fact, the company has already closed three rounds of financing from DiCaprio, Twitter/Medium founder Evan Williams, Zynga founder Mark Pincus, One Kings Lane cofounder Alison Pincus, SUN Microsystems founder Andreas Bechtolsheim, Facebook cofounder Andrew McCollum, former Facebook COO Owen van Natta, Marc Benioff's private-investment manager Mark Goldstein, Sequoia Capital's David Spector, former eBay President Jeff Skoll, Scott Banister, Vast Ventures, and many others, Daily Mail noted.
As for Leonardo DiCaprio, who just turned 41 on Nov. 11, the "Blue Diamond" actor said that he's drawn to Diamond Foundry's aim to reduce the human and environmental effects of the diamond industry by "sustainably culturing diamonds without the destructive use of mining," Tech Crunch reported.
Diamond Foundry also boasts some interesting twists. For one, it's using solar power credit to reduce its carbon footprint to zero. And it has also launched an online marketplace that features almost 200, mostly independent, jewelry designers, who receive "100 percent" of the money customers pay for the jewelry, minus the value of the diamonds.
