Diamond Foundry

Congratulations to Taylor & Kelce for their engagement — we are elated! We have been asked a lot but have a general confidentiality agreement to not comment, including on the provenance and origin of her diamond rough. But the Old Mine Brilliant cut is a very special choice and it is available to everyone via Cut for You(TM) at our www.VRAI.com Thank you to the fashion media as well for featuring VRAI! https://lnkd.in/diXyhw9j https://lnkd.in/d3U_K5bn PS: On the topic of diamond rough, the mined diamond industry just managed to extend the “grandfathering” of Russian diamonds by another year, so they are not subject to sanctions. 40% of the world’s diamonds are mined by Alrosa, a business directly controlled by the Kremlin. The industry can do better!

De Beers is on a desperate roll to denigrate lab grown diamonds. The PR push is even more aggressive now that De Beers is on the block for sale as a company and their partnership with Botswana disintegrating. Recent media pushes by De Beers include major articles in the WSJ and the Financial Times which parroted exactly their latest internal PR playbook. They’re good at it — getting their message points out with gullible journalists. They get journalists to speak to far flung producers in China and then speak with De Beers’ curated list of associates, of which there are many. Notably zero Western diamond growers and zero Western lab diamond retailers were even spoken to about an article of lab diamonds sold on the West! And btw, the Natural Diamond Council is just De Beers, no reason to be confused about this. The story lines are similar — mined diamond take a billion years to form whereas lab grown diamonds are produced by the Chinese. According to the FT, 70% of all lab diamonds come from China. It taps into anti-Chinese sentiment in the West and lots of old cliches. The only problem is it is plain wrong in most every way. Here are the facts: - Mined diamonds are not rare. Their scarcity is plain controlled by the rate of mining deployed by a cartel of miners including De Beers and Putin’s (the Kremlin’s) miner. - Diamonds in earth do not take a billion years to form. Natural diamond formation happening over billions of years is a myth. In fact, the bulk of a diamond can form relatively quickly under the right conditions. - Equating the De Beers messaging of “billions of years” with scarcity and value as implied by the WSJ and FT is further plain idiotic. By example, the water in the oceans is billions of years older than any diamond, and this does not make ocean water very valuable.  - Most diamonds are NOT produced in China. The largest producer in the world is Diamond Foundry with its American foundry based on zero-emission energy. So how about De Beers denigrating DF's American diamonds versus its African diamonds? This would probably not come over too well, with the American public for sure. - The next largest producers are in India. Again, bashing India may not sell as well as bashing China these days. After all, most of De Beers’ customers are also in India. De Beers’ desperation is clear and will ultimately harm the company and make their product ever more irrelevant. Denigrating diamonds grown in America by denigrating the entire category must stop. For more about why American grown diamonds are unmatched, see https://lnkd.in/dfjkJRSP

Taylor Swift announces she re-captured her legacy (re-purchased the rights to her early music) — wearing VRAI created diamonds by Diamond Foundry. Proud to part of life’s true moments!

"Investigating mining operations in Sierra Leone, Lesotho, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, this documentary exposes the unspoken realities of industrial diamond mining in African countries. The claim that 99% of diamonds are now conflict-free eclipses persistent and systemic challenges on the ground. 'Beyond Shining Illusions' gives a voice to local residents and artisanal miners directly affected by large-scale diamond mining operations. In their testimonies, they share ongoing struggles, highlighting cases of violence by security forces protecting mining operations, air and water pollution due to blasting and tailings management practices, and an overall lack of socio-economic benefits. Produced by the Kimberley Process Civil Society Coalition, the documentary aims to shed light on issues that are today overlooked, to go behind the marketing lines, demand real change and foster meaningful discussion on the ways the sector can uphold its potential to do good for communities. For diamond resources to truly benefit communities, the documentary identifies greater transparency and independent monitoring as key elements to enhance corporate accountability. Mining companies, industry actors and states all have a role to play to protect community rights and improve both mining and sourcing practices. This documentary has been produced with the financial assistance of the European Union." https://lnkd.in/e9DqGx6S

Our first greenfield project D Foundry II in Trujillo, Spain has commenced operation with our first 80-foot long cluster plasma reactors. A first glimpse in the video below. Architect Ettore Sottsass' long-time partner Marco Zanini did a beautiful job designing the building to reflect local materials and style elements -- while adding a bit of his renowned design signature.

U.S. CHIPS supports Oakland, CA startup Akash Systems Congratulations to Oakland, CA based Akash Systems for receiving $18m in U.S. CHIPS funding. This US gov support multiplies 8x Khosla Ventures’ own investment in the startup. And had Kamala Harris been elected, she’d surely be part of the announcement in West Oakland! At DF, we have received questions and therefore a few words here — in public for the sake of transparency and efficiency: Akash’s founder Felix Ejeckam has a long history working on a specific angle of bringing diamond to chips: depositing polycrystalline diamond directly onto the back of GaN based RF chips. His team has been pioneering this a long time ago. Here are some facts to know: - Polycrystalline wafers are 5x more expensive and 5x less conductive thermally (vertically) than single-crystalline diamond (SCD). Only SCD is isotropic. Only SCD is polishable cost efficiently to wafer precision surface finish. - Polycrystalline diamond can be directly deposited to the back of GaN RF chips because GaN can take high temperatures of diamond deposition. However, the market for RF chips is small. - AI and other silicon CMOS chips cannot take high diamond deposition temperatures, therefore separate bonding is required, in which case customers may as well go for the highest-performing diamond, ie. SCD. - Making polycrystalline diamond is widely known around the world for a long time. All the chip foundries know how to do this themselves. At DF, we are focused on single-crystalline diamond (SCD) wafers only — without any US gov support. While poly diamond wafers have existed for decades, SCD wafers are a very recent innovation. Ultimately those will dominate all chip applications due to their lower cost and higher performance. We appreciate the attention that Akash’s PR brings to the space and are wishing them success — after all we are all US tax payers and do not like to see taxpayer funds get wasted! That said, we are very confident in the merit of our technology and expect this to become obvious in the market. Plus we have already built SCD growth capacity suitable for six million chips, and already have a 100x bigger business than Akash today. God bless that they not become as famous as Solyndra though!

As we enter the second decade focused on chip tech of our 30-year founding master plan, on the occasion of a keynote at Slush 2024 with 14,000 attendees, our CEO reviewed the first decade of getting diamond production to cost efficient scale while battling the entrenched diamond mining cartel. Topics: Cartel collusion, De Beers monopoly power abuse, corruptible conspirators Bain&Co / BCG / S&P Global / GIA / JVC, incorruptible women, and advanced tech ultimately winning.

Diamonds Brought Prosperity to Botswana. Women Workers Are Paying a Heavy Price -- numerous violations at companies hand-selected by De Beers. https://lnkd.in/e87cKuAy