'Blood Diamond' Actor Leonardo DiCaprio and 10 billionaires invested in the Santa Clara-based startup Diamond Foundry. It is a company that ambitions to produce diamonds in a lab that are equal in quality with natural gems without the exploitation that mining industries impose.
The Business Insider reported that the company claims that it could make hundreds of diamonds in just a matter of two weeks. These diamonds weigh up to nine carats each. The company starts with a real diamond, which is used as a seed crystal. This makes their product different from the rest of the synthetic diamonds in the market, said a Diamond Foundry spokesperson. After that, they will use super heated plasma to build more atoms on the seed crystal. And then, layer by layer, they will be able to produce real diamonds. These gems are produced in chemical reactors that can be as hot as 8,000 degrees Celsius. That is more than 14,000 degrees Fahrenheit. To have an idea of how hot that is, the surface of the sun is only 5,500 degrees Celsius.
According to Tech Crunch, some of Diamond Foundry's investors besides DiCaprio are entrepreneurs Mark and Alison Pincus, Ev Williams, and Facebook COO Owen Van Natta. It is notable that DiCaprio played a gem smuggler in the movie "Blood Diamond" in 2006. Now, he is investing in diamond production. He said he was attracted by the venture because it aims to "reducing the human and environmental toll of the diamond industry by sustainably culturing diamonds without the destructive use of mining."
Diamond Foundry is created by R. Martin Roscheisen, the founder of Nanosolar. He, along with a group of scientists and engineers announced on Wednesday that they came up with an advanced approach to make diamonds using technology from making silicon chips and solar cells, according to The New York Times.
According to Diamond Foundry, it has raised less than $100 million so far. This is a big amount considering that the company recently launched on Wednesday.
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