Our story
Delivering the future of diamond
Innovating in solar power
Our founding team of M.I.T., Stanford, and Princeton engineers develop pioneering breakthroughs to make solar power mainstream. They create America’s first venture-funded solar tech startup and grow it into the higest-valued solar startup with $640m in funding. Eventually, Chinese government subsidized competition overcomes their flagship venture in solar power. Still, our founders realize that they can apply related equipment technology to make diamond and enable tech uses for it.
Designing reactors to grow diamond
Starting from first principles, the Maxwell equations, and thousands of physics-based computer simulations, the team sets out to invent a new type of a plasma reactor that is highly productive at creating the atomically densest material in the universe: diamond.
Forming plasma as hot as the outer layers of the sun
We start a series of experiments in a warehouse just south of San Francisco. We build three generations of plasma reactors from scratch, crafting hundreds of individual, precision-engineered parts.
Launching the first plasma reactor
After eight months of building the first full reactor and spending our entire funds on it, the moment of truth arrives: the reactor is ready. Great relief spreads around the office when the technology works as designed and the plasma lights.
The challenge of creating white diamonds
The first three diamonds produced in-house are polished from rough. It turns out that fabricating white diamonds is a thorny issue: benevolent supporters call their brown color “cognac”.
Kicking off and increasing production
After three years of technological development, Diamond Foundry Inc. comes out of stealth mode with funding from leading lights in the industry.
First sales commence directly to consumers worldwide. All diamonds produced fly off the shelves. The team ramps up production as fast as possible.
Quadrupling production to meet swiftly growing demand
While a MegaCarat foundry in Wenatchee, Washington State, is being developed, we acquire values-driven, digital-first jewelry startup VRAI in Los Angeles to become our direct-to-consumer channel.
Becoming the best-funded, fastest-scaling diamond grower in the world
Innovations in our reactor technology enable us to become the world’s source of diamonds at mining scale, sustainable in both the sense of inexhaustible as well as certified carbon neutral.
We launch our website in China and initiate e-commerce sales.
The team at Diamond Foundry is faced with a new challenge: creating a block of diamond with the dimensions necessary for Jony Ive and Marc Newson to design an all-diamond ring for Bono’s (RED), which was auctioned by Sotheby’s.
Achieving profitability
We exceed an annualized production of 100,000 carats that turns profitable for the entire year.
Our 100% hydro-powered Washington State foundry commences normal production.
Empowering tech
With our single-crystal diamond wafers, we develop the first semiconductor solution: a bi-wafer product that combines proven Si, SiC, and GaN semiconductors with the thermal performance of diamonds.
Using a combination of advanced techniques owned uniquely by us, the size of our wafers increases as fast as our production.
World’s first single-crystal diamond wafer
We acquire Audiatec, a German company that has worked for 25 years on the singular scientific challenge of synthesizing single-crystal diamonds.
Our team achieves a historical breakthrough: the world’s first single-crystal diamond wafer, a major landmark in technology that effectively arcs back to the creation of the first silicon wafer in 1959.
Building our second foundry in Spain
An $850 million project supported by the EU and the Spanish government, our production of single-crystal diamond chips is slated to start in 2025, serving both traditional diamond buyers and the semiconductor industries. It will be one of the first industrial projects in the world entirely powered by solar electricity.
A Diamond Behind Every Chip
Without the human and environmental toll of mining, our single-crystal diamonds substitute and transcend mined ones for all places they can go. And in the form of wafers, they can go to several places in tech where mined diamonds cannot, empowering these industries to transform the future of computing, wireless communication, and sustainable transport.