LakeDiamond and EPFL, a rewarding partnership
Expertise and financial support: EPFL has guided LakeDiamond since its inception to revolutionize entire segments of high-tech industries using lab-grown diamond.
The campus of École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) is a particularly dynamic innovation ecosystem. A total of 250 start-ups were created between 2000 and 2017. The university supports them with a number of aid programmes ranging from grants and scholarships to scientific collaboration. One of the start-ups that grew out of this ecosystem is LakeDiamond. Founded in 2015, the company produces lab-grown diamonds used in industry. Its precious stones are much purer than the natural gems extracted from mines. Today, only three companies in the world have developed this manufacturing process.
The beginnings of LakeDiamond date back to 2007, when Pascal Gallo, the company’s founder and CEO, came to EPFL to work on his postdoctorate. At the time, he was specialized in quantum theories and their applications in crystals and diamonds. Meanwhile, he had joined a start-up founded by Eli Kapon, a professor of physics at EPFL, who was developing lasers.
“I was increasingly interested in the concrete applications of diamonds. With Eli Kapon and his team, we began integrating lab-grown diamonds into laser beams. The intensity of these lasers depends on the ability to dissipate heat and diamond is the best material in the world for conducting heat, which allowed us to develop much more powerful lasers”, Mr Gallo says.
The lasers were so much more powerful that in 2010, the team broke the world record for laser energy transmission. After filing for a patent, Mr Gallo decided to found his own start-up to continue exploring industrial applications using diamonds. But they ran into a problem. Finding a steady supply of ultra-pure, lab-grown diamond was a challenge. In 2011, he met two physicists, David Rats and Christophe Provent, and the finance expert Théophile Mounier. Together, they developed reactors to grow high-quality diamonds along with a business plan. In developing their business plan, they received support from EPFL’s Technology Transfer Office, which manages intellectual property from the school’s research and supports the creation of start-ups.
Four labs bring support
Today, LakeDiamond has 25 employees. Based on the campus of the EPFL Innovation Park, the company benefits from being surrounded by university laboratories. “We grow diamonds in our reactors, but we use EPFL equipment for different processes such as measuring diamonds and cutting pieces scaled to our needs,” Mr Gallo says. In exchange, the university has invested a minority stake in LakeDiamond.
But the ties between the company and the university go even further. LakeDiamond has divided its applications into four categories: micromechanics, photonics, electronics and biotech. “We work with an EPFL research group for each application.” This scientific collaboration receives financial support from the university’s various programmes and even national research funds. In quantum applications, LakeDiamond will collaborate with the new initiative EPFL innovators, which provides entrepreneurial support for a selection of PhD candidates starting in November.
“The synergies that we can create with the campus are valuable to the development of LakeDiamond,” Pascal Gallo says
To raise the funds needed to shift up to large-scale production, the start-up has launched a 60 million Swiss franc ICO (Initial Coin Offering). It will then put that money into internalizing all its diamond manufacturing processes.
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