Carbon dioxide extracted from the open air is gradually turning into a diamond somewhere in a reactor facility in Chicago under intense heat and pressure driven by clean electricity. Atom by atom. Week by week. It sounds like something from a novel by Jules Verne. However, the man behind it has a waitlist to show that it is actually happening right now.
The CEO and co-founder of Aether, a startup in New York, Ryan Shearman has spent years creating a patent-pending method that uses CO2 straight from the atmosphere to create gem-grade diamonds in about four weeks. For comparison, Mother Nature requires roughly a billion years. Shearman doesn’t hold back when discussing the drama of that analogy.
| Company | Aether Diamonds |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2020 |
| Headquarters | New York, USA |
| Founder & CEO | Ryan Shearman |
| Core Technology | Direct Air Capture + Chemical Vapor Deposition |
| Carbon Impact | ~20 metric tons of CO₂ removed per carat |
| Price Range | $3,000 (rings) to $40,000 (earrings) |
| Energy Source | Solar, wind, and hydraulic power |
| Production Time | Approximately 4 weeks per batch |
| Competitor | Skydiamond (UK), founded by Dale Vince |
| Reference Website | aether.diamonds |
According to him, what he does is “the unprecedented modern alchemy of turning air pollution into precious stones.” It sounds like marketing copy, but the diamonds are real, and it seems like people really want them.
The first step in the process is direct air capture, which uses technology licensed from Climeworks, a Zurich-based business that currently uses waste heat from an incinerator in a small town to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. After being transformed into methane, the gas is transported to Chicago and fed into a chemical vapor deposition reactor that uses renewable energy.
The end product is a real diamond crystal that is chemically identical to anything that is extracted from the earth in South Africa. According to Aether, each carat eliminates about 20 metric tons of CO2.
That exceeds the annual production of the majority of Americans. Shearman once told Vogue that you could effectively offset two and a half years of your own carbon footprint by purchasing a two-carat ring. It’s an impressive assertion. Additionally, it is the type of pitch that causes investors to recline in their seats.
There are others in this area besides Aether. Across the Atlantic, Dale Vince, a British businessman who identifies as both an environmentalist and a businessman, established Skydiamond with the goal of creating what he claims are the first “zero-impact diamonds.”
When discussing the traditional diamond industry, Vince is more direct than Shearman, highlighting its history of child labor, underpaid laborers, ecological devastation, and the lingering shadow of so-called conflict diamonds. His advertising is direct: “All the bling… none of the sting.” Both men may be aware that they are selling more than just jewels. A conscience is what they are selling.
The history of that conscience is convoluted. The modern origins of the natural diamond trade can be traced back to 1871 in Kimberley, South Africa, when a fortuitous discovery on a farm led to near-madness. The vast majority of the 50,000 miners who arrived in the area were Black, and they were paid poorly and had even less protection. They created the Big Hole, which is still visible from space and is 42 acres wide and 790 feet deep, using shovels and picks.
De Beers Consolidated Mines, a near-total monopoly that eventually controlled 80 to 85 percent of the world’s diamond supply, grew out of that wound in the ground. In the first five years alone, thousands of people died from pneumonia, tuberculosis, and mining accidents.
Since then, the industry has made an effort to change. Companies from 77 nations convened in 2000, appropriately close to the now-closed Big Hole, to adopt what became known as the Kimberley Process, a set of moral guidelines approved by the UN and intended to remove conflict diamonds from international trade. 99.8% of diamonds are now certified conflict-free, according to the industry.
However, in recent years, even the departing head of the World Diamond Council has warned that a “grab and get rich mentality” still exists in some parts of the supply chain and acknowledged that some countries aren’t appropriately enforcing those standards. Whether voluntary certification systems will ever be sufficient is still up for debate.
Since 1954, lab-grown diamonds have been produced. Tracy Hall, an American chemist employed by General Electric, used a high-pressure reactor to produce diamond crystals from carbon in a matter of weeks. In the end, this discovery led to the creation of a global lab-diamond market that is currently estimated to be worth $280 million.
This market is small in comparison to the natural industry, but it is expanding, and it is widely acknowledged that it has pushed ethical reforms by generating pressure from competitors. However, Aether and Skydiamond are trying something different. They’re not merely taking mining out of the picture. By creating the diamond itself, they are repairing the environment.
It seems like timing is important in this situation. A tiny but significant window for this type of product has been created by rising public awareness of climate change and younger consumers’ growing concerns about the origins of the products they purchase.
The sales pitch for a luxury product that actively cleans the environment is nearly flawless for a generation that grew up with carbon footprint calculators on their phones. It is still genuinely unclear whether the science will eventually become affordable for people other than the wealthy early adopters and whether it will scale sufficiently to be significant.
De Beers hasn’t remained motionless in the face of all of this. A senior geochemist in charge of the project stated that carbonate minerals created in this manner can remain stable for hundreds of thousands of years—longer than forests or subterranean reservoirs, both of which can fail. In January, the company published a sizable advertisement in The New York Times detailing 12 new sustainability goals, including a program called CarbonVault that aims to use the rock formations surrounding its South African mines to permanently store CO2. It appears that the elderly giant is observing the newcomers.
The International Gemological Institute has certified the diamonds that Aether sells. Every grading report contains a measurement of the amount of CO2 removed in relation to that specific stone, as well as the time and location where the atmospheric carbon was captured. Traceability is elevated to a new level, encompassing not only the gem’s origin but also its costs and benefits to the environment.
A ring currently costs about $3,000, while elaborate earring arrangements cost up to $40,000. Shearman claims that there is a lengthy waitlist. It will reveal something about these businesses as well as how much people are genuinely willing to pay to feel good about beauty if that demand persists, grows, or eventually stagnates.
