Recent Posts
Culture August 9, 2016
Silicon Valley, the tech innovation cradle of the world, is making the switch from software to bling.
After years of testing and tweaking its technology, Diamond Foundry is now able to take a sliver of a diamond and heat it at temperatures close to those on the surface of the sun. The result is the growth of a diamond atomically identical to the “seed diamond.”
“The diamond industry occurred to us as a very traditional industry,” Martin Roscheisen, its founding creator, tells CNBC. “[It’s] characterized by human rights issues, child labor, all really terrible things and no one was trying to change the industry.”
Not only are these human pains removed by creating diamonds in a lab, but Roscheisen and his team are doing it in an environmentally responsible way. The New York Times reports the company, “will buy solar power credits to reduce its carbon footprint to zero,” so that the startup may become an eco-friendly alternative to the traditional diamond.
“Now that Diamond Foundry exists, it’s great,” Christine Guibara, one of Diamond Foundry’s jewelers tells CNBC. She said she enjoys offering clients the sustainable alternative so authentic that it is impossible to tell the company’s product apart from a mined diamond.
The brilliance of the Diamond Foundry shines far beyond its product. The star status extends even to the startup’s backers, who include the founders of Twitter, Facebook, and “Blood Diamond” star Leonardo DiCaprio, who approached the team with a desire to fund an ethical and environmentally positive alternative.
