A startup called Eterneva aims to create diamonds to help families process grief after the death of a pet or loved one.The company secured $4.8 million across four funding rounds and is pursuing a Series A round in 2021.When Adelle Archer appeared on"Shark Tank" in October 2019, she had company. Among the living, she had her business partner Garrett Ozar and the sharks, including Mark Cuban, who wound up investing $600,000 for a 9% stake in the company.
Eterneva, a cremation-diamond company founded in 2016 by Archer and Ozar, has taken the direct-to-consumer ethos and aesthetic and applied it to the death care industry. This year, the company is focusing on expansion, pursuing Series A funding and partnering with funeral homes to bring a technology-driven company to a slow-to-adapt funeral landscape.
The remains make their way to Eterneva's headquarters in Austin, where carbon is extracted and rendered into what Archer calls a"diamond seed." Once the carbon is purified, the lab-growth process is similar to other synthetic diamonds on the market, and can include colorizing the diamond and setting it in a ring, necklace, or other piece of jewelry.
Archer said internal market research shows that about 80% of the people-turned-diamonds did not know about their postmortem journey. Like much of the death industry, it's centered around those close to the person or pet.
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