Google searches for lab grown diamonds have soared

Sherwood News

Pandora’s CEO thinks lab-grown diamonds will reign in 10 years

Looking for that special sparkly something? Synthetic diamonds would like a word.

8/14/24 4:38AM

Pandora has posted another shining quarter, with the Danish jeweler bumping its revenue guidance for the second time in 2024. One part of the business that glistened in Q2? Lab-grown diamonds, sales of which rose 88% year-on-year.

Although less than 1% of the company’s overall revenues, CEO Alexander Lacik expects the synthetic stones to play a much bigger part in his brand and the wider industry in the coming years. Speaking to Bloomberg, Lacik said that lab-grown diamonds are “disrupting in a big, big way”, before predicting that they will account for the “vast majority” of diamond sales in 10 years’ time.

Crowned jewels

Many, including Lacik, have pointed to lab-grown diamonds being relatively easier on the planet (and much easier on the wallet) as potential reasons for their rising popularity. Back in Q1, for example, natural diamonds were almost 4x as expensive as lab-grown alternatives, according to data from industry expert Paul Zimnisky. Indeed, while the eco-friendly credentials of the gems have come under more scrutiny in recent years, they’ve caught consumers’ attention.

Data from Google Trends shows that interest in the lab-grown stones reached a peak last December, perhaps as people conducted some hurried research into Christmas gifts. Interest has even consistently outranked the search volume for natural diamonds… a word which was never really needed as a distinguishing descriptor until lab-grown started to take off.

Nate Becker

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Takis doesn’t think so, as it searches for a “Chief Intensity Officer.”

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OpenAI’s ARR reached over $20 billion in 2025, CFO says

Sam Altman’s $500 billion artificial intelligence behemoth hit a major financial milestone last year, according to a new blog post over the weekend from OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar, as the company confirmed it had hit a more than $20 billion annual revenue run rate at the end of 2025.

Elsewhere in the blog post, Friar spent time addressing the company’s shifting goals, referencing plans to “close the distance between where intelligence is advancing and how individuals, companies, and countries actually adopt and use it.” As has become customary in the AI company press release genre, the CFO was also keen to tout the unending growth of the business, writing:

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”

And, perhaps most importantly for current backers and those keeping an eye on the private company before its rumored mega IPO:

“Revenue followed the same curve growing 3X year over year, or 10X from 2023 to 2025: $2B ARR in 2023, $6B in 2024, and $20B+ in 2025. This is never-before-seen growth at such scale.”

That latest figure has certainly set tongues in the tech world wagging, just as the company announced it would begin rolling out ads to free and ChatGPT Go users. It also puts the chatbot giant a fair way ahead of competitors like Anthropic, the company behind Claude.

OpenAI Anthropic ARR race — Sherwood News

A business that scales with the value of intelligence

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”