There’s a company called Diamond Foundry and they claim to be able to do something rather unique – grow diamonds. If you think that sounds like hogwash they’ve done enough to win over Hollywood heavyweight Leonardo DiCaprio, the startup now confident that three years of hard work have finally paid off.

The company claims that by using a sliver of a natural diamond they can hatch real diamonds in the lab. BusinessInsider with more:

The startup says it is “culturing diamonds,” and asserts its process does not yield traditional synthetic diamonds but “100% pure diamonds” with the same molecular imperfections of the diamonds you’d find in the Earth.

An investor in Diamond Foundry likened the process to growing a plant. You need a seed from another plant for a new one to grow. In this case, a small slice of a natural diamond is used as the base, or “seed,” to grow new layers on top of the crystal until new diamonds are formed. Then that “seed” base is scraped off and reused to grow new diamonds.

These diamonds are grown in a very hot reactor that reaches about 8,000 degrees Fahrenheit…

The company says it discovered a plasma that allows atoms to attach themselves to the thin slice of Earth-extracted diamond. The atoms then stack on top of that natural diamond, layer by layer, until a pure, jewelry-grade diamond is formed.

Hundreds of these diamonds can be formed at once in just a few weeks, the largest so far weighing nine carats…

“[Ours] are pure diamond, just like industrially mined diamonds,” Diamond Foundry insists. “But ethically and morally pure as well.”

It might sound rather fantastical but Diamond Foundry have managed to raise around $100 million, including getting Facebook cofounder Andrew McCollum and Twitter founder Evan Williams on board.

So if they can churn out diamonds at a rate of knots does this mean we will see a massive reduction in price across the board?

Diamond Foundry says that because the industry is so large (roughly $30 billion), even if it’s producing hundreds of diamonds routinely in its lab, it won’t be able to make enough of them to seriously impact the overall price and demand for diamonds.

Ah well, maybe not in the foreseeable future but here’s hoping one day companies like this can have a real impact on the illicit diamond trade that impacts large parts of Africa.

If they could redirect some of those funds back to Leo for an accent coach on how to speak like a Saffa that would also be appreciated.

[source:businessinsider]