The international corporation De Beers made diamonds “eternal” with its marketing slogan in the 1930s. Controversial information about their painful exploitation and financing of wars has made them “blood diamonds.” The startup Diamond Foundry has made them truly artificial. The largest diamond they have produced so far weighed 12 carats.
Diamond Foundry “grows” its precious stones atom by atom from a thin layer of “mother diamond” mined in Canada. Diamonds grow for two weeks to a month in a plasma reactor that reaches temperatures of the sun (around 5538 °C). The process is expensive and energy-intensive, but since solar and hydro energy is used, no harmful emissions are released, reports CNN Money.
The American Gemological Institute has confirmed that diamonds created this way are indistinguishable from their “natural competition” formed over billions of years under high pressure and temperature in the depths of the Earth’s mantle. They are also not different in price, and according to Martin Roscheisen (CEO), demand exceeds supply, and everything they produce in two weeks (between 150 and 300 diamonds) sells out.
A team of engineers, Martin Roscheisen, Jeremy Scholz, and Kyle Gaza, who designed the entire process of artificial diamond production, worked together at Nanosolar, a company that manufactures solar-powered technology. Educated at MIT, Stanford, and Princeton, these experts spent two years researching and developing the production process, and in November 2015, they were ready to launch their facility in Santa Clara. Investors quickly recognized this venture, and in just over a month from its inception, the project had around 100 million dollars at its disposal.
Among the billionaires who immediately supported this somewhat unusual Silicon Valley startup are Twitter founder Evan Williams, Facebook co-founder Andrew McCollum, and Leonardo DiCaprio, who supported an ethical approach to diamond production with his investment. It is worth noting that DiCaprio starred in the 2006 film Blood Diamond (Blood Diamond), which deals with the sale of diamonds from war-torn areas of Africa to large companies trading in precious stones to finance civil wars.
Interestingly, although the diamond industry is tainted by blood diamonds that have financed civil wars in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Liberia, and by primitive exploitation methods where thousands of men, women, and children are used as slaves, as in Sierra Leone, according to the Kimberley Process, they account for only 0.1% of the world’s total diamond production.
