A startup called Dust Identity raised $10m to grow its diamond-based security business.
The company, which uses tiny bits of diamond dust to help manufacturers secure their supply chains against counterfeiters, offers a solution to manufacturers who are struggling to control the quality of all the pieces that go into their products.
The rise of affordable 3D-printing has made it easier for manufacturers to fabricate specialty parts.
But, since anyone can scan a complicated component and then 3D print it, it has also made it harder for manufacturers to differentiate counterfeit parts from legitimate ones.
Dust Identity mixes tiny, ground-up diamond fragments into a polymer and then sprays the whole mixture onto physical objects such as airplane parts or computer components.
When these objects dry, these tiny diamond fragments form a unique configuration that can be scanned into a database and used to authenticate objects as they move along a supply chain.
This surprisingly simple, physical solution is cheaper — and more foolproof — than other counterfeiting solutions such as holograph tags, RFID chips, or bar codes. The cheapest RFID tags cost around 15 cents each, while a diamond dust tag costs about 1/1000 of a cent.