It's the biggest disrupter
the diamond industry has faced.
We're growing diamonds that are identical in every way
to a mined stone.
Lab-grown diamonds are the future of the industry.
Machines are now growing diamonds
in a matter of weeks for two thirds of the price.
But can they replace the magic of a mined stone?
These stones were created by nature.
Thousands of year ago, lab-created diamonds
could never take the place of the real thing.
Could they cause the 82 billion dollar
diamond jewelry industry to lose its sparkle?
You must travel back in time
one billion years to witness its birth.
Sophisticated ads have been making the case
for diamonds for decades.
De Beers, the world's biggest rough diamond producer
by value, linked diamonds with romance in the late 1940s
and dreamt up the idea of a diamond engagement ring
as an essential display of love.
The diamond engagement ring.
How else could two months' salary last forever?
Diamonds are purchased emotionally.
People, in previous times, adorned gods with them.
So called Queen of Diamonds, Alisa Moussaieff,
sells gems to the rich and the royal the world over
and has done for over half a century.
For her, there's more to a diamond
than its chemical structure.
The energy is in the stone itself.
The moment you hold it in your hand, you would feel it.
It speaks to you.
The real diamonds have got that energy,
which can never be recreated.
While sales of lab-grown diamonds
are about 2% of the industry,
the market is growing by over 15% a year.
They've actually been around for more than 60 years,
but recently, the process and the product
have been refined.
California-based Diamond Foundry
can create a one carat diamond in two weeks.
The process begins by taking a seed crystal.
Right here, you can actually see a seed itself.
This contains the atomic blueprint
that actually makes a diamond a diamond.
The reactors are then filled with a mixture
of carbon, cane and gasses
and those gasses are electrically separated.
So, the carbon atoms themselves bond
with the surface of the seed.
Any gemologist in the world
will put one of our stones under a grading lamp
and grade it exactly the same as a mined stone.
Though the difference can be detected
using specialized equipment in a lab,
the US Federal Trade Commission, in July 2018,
expanded its definition of a diamond
to include lab-grown stones.
But Mrs. Moussaieff doesn't feel threatened.
Lab-created diamonds may affect the lower part
of the market, but it will never affect the real gems.
There will be no disruption.
The very expensive diamonds are still bought
for investment purposes,
an investment which holds its value.
Now buyers can pick up a lab-grown diamond
for a third less than a mined stone
and as technology improves, prices will drop further.
Big mined stones are valuable because they are rare.
But diamond mining has been linked to conflict,
human rights abuses and state corruption.
Lab-grown diamonds provide an ethically sourced alternative.
We're giving customers the option of
a product that is 100% traceable and origin guaranteed.
That just hasn't been possible
in the diamond industry before.
But until top designers decide to work
with lab-grown stones, their potential will be limited
within the luxury market.
I would not call a lab-created diamond jewelry, really.
I would consider it an ornament.
An ornament can be made of silk,
it can be made of steel
and it can be made as a lab-created diamond.
Lab-grown diamonds need the glamour
and romance associated with mined diamonds
if they're going to survive.
Mined diamonds and lab-grown diamonds
can coexist peacefully in the market.
We hope that lab-grown diamonds growth in the industry
will be a call to action for the entire industry
to clean up their practices.
It's a direction the diamond market
is already heading.
As of January 2019, Tiffany & Co,
the biggest jeweler in the world by sales,
will disclose the origin of all of its diamonds.
It could force a new wave of transparency
across the jewelry world.
But, for the makers of lab-grown diamonds,
the jewelry world is only the beginning.
Diamonds can be used in everything from
cutting and grinding to quantum computing,
which can drive the true future of computing.
It's not the end of the diamond industry,
it's the beginning.