Diamond Foundry is a producer of lab grown diamonds in

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

USA The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. Diamond Foundry claims that its lab-grown diamonds are of similar quality to natural diamonds and are more environmentally sustainable, as they do not require the extraction and processing of diamonds from the earth.

History

Diamond Foundry was founded in 2012 by

Martin Roscheisen R. Martin Roscheisen is an Austrian-American technology entrepreneur. Early life Roscheisen was born and raised in Munich, Germany, as an Austrian citizen. Attending Feodor Lynen high school near Munich, he graduated valedictorian in 1987. As a ...

and Jeremy Scholz. The company raised approximately $315 million in funding from various investors, including $200 million from Fidelity,

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

and

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

founding investor

Andy Bechtolsheim Andreas Maria Maximilian Freiherr von Mauchenheim genannt Bechtolsheim (born 30 September 1955) is a German electrical engineer, entrepreneur and investor. He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and was its chief hardware designer. His net worth ...

iPod The iPod is a discontinued series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about months after the Macintosh version of iTunes ...

co-creator

Tony Fadell Anthony Michael Fadell (born March 22, 1969) is an American engineer, designer, entrepreneur, and investor. He was senior vice president of the iPod division at Apple Inc. and founder and former CEO of Nest Labs. Fadell joined Apple Inc. in 20 ...

eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became a ...

founding president

Jeff Skoll Jeffrey Stuart Skoll, OC (born January 16, 1965) is a Canadian engineer, billionaire internet entrepreneur and film producer. He was the first president of eBay, eventually using the wealth this gave him to become a philanthropist, particularly ...

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

founder Evan Williams,

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

co-founder

Andrew McCollum Andrew McCollum (born September 4, 1983) is an American angel investor and businessman. McCollum is a co-founder of Facebook and current CEO of Philo. Education He attended Harvard University with co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and others on the f ...

, actor Leonardo DiCaprio, and businessman

Jean Pigozzi Jean "Johnny" Pigozzi (born 1952), heir to the CEO of the automobile brand Simca, is an art collector, photographer, fashion designer and . He lives in Geneva. Biography Pigozzi is a "French-born Italian". He was born in Paris in 1952 and is ...

. In November 2016, the company purchased Vrai and Oro, a jewelry brand founded by entrepreneur Vanessa Stofenmacher. In 2020, they rebranded as VRAI, and in 2021, opened a showroom in

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

. In March 2022, Diamond Foundry announced a lawsuit against the United States Trade Office in response to trade tariffs put in place against

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. The company claimed the tariffs penalize businesses to an excessive degree for using polishing services in China.

Technology

The company used software simulations of plasma physics to develop its technology for managing a high-density plasma for diamond growth at high temperatures. The company grows diamonds using the

chemical vapor deposition Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is a vacuum deposition method used to produce high quality, and high-performance, solid materials. The process is often used in the semiconductor industry to produce thin films. In typical CVD, the wafer (substra ...

(CVD) method, a

vacuum deposition Vacuum deposition is a group of processes used to deposit layers of material atom-by-atom or molecule-by-molecule on a solid surface. These processes operate at pressures well below atmospheric pressure (i.e., vacuum). The deposited layers can r ...

process in which a small piece of natural diamond is placed in a

plasma Plasma or plasm may refer to: Science * Plasma (physics), one of the four fundamental states of matter * Plasma (mineral), a green translucent silica mineral * Quark–gluon plasma, a state of matter in quantum chromodynamics Biology * Blood pla ...

reactor for a period of about two weeks. The resulting man-made diamond is essentially identical to naturally occurring diamonds (atomically, molecularly, chemically, visually, in terms of hardness, optical brilliance, crystalline structure, etc.) but without the resource intensiveness, hazards, and

environmental concerns Environmental issues are effects of human activity on the biophysical environment, most often of which are harmful effects that cause environmental degradation. Environmental protection is the practice of protecting the natural environment on th ...

that occur with diamond mining.

Awards and recognition

* "25 hottest startups that launched in 2015", by ''

Business Insider ''Insider'', previously named ''Business Insider'' (''BI''), is an American financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Insider''s parent company Insider Inc. has been owned by the German publ ...

'' * One of the "Disruptor 50 Companies" in 2016, by ''

CNBC CNBC (formerly Consumer News and Business Channel) is an American basic cable business news channel. It provides business news programming on weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Eastern Time, while broadcasting talk sho ...

'' * "Disruptive 25" in 2016, by ''

Inc. Magazine ''Inc.'' is an American business magazine founded in 1979 and based in New York City. The magazine publishes six issues per year, along with surrounding online and social media content. The magazine also produces several live and virtual events y ...

'' * One of "The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies" in 2018 by ''

Fast Company ''Fast Company'' is a monthly American business magazine published in print and online that focuses on technology, business, and design. It publishes six print issues per year. History ''Fast Company'' was launched in November 1995 by Alan Web ...

References

External links

Companies based in San Francisco Privately held companies based in California American companies established in 2013 Synthetic diamond {{US-company-stub