Not just for finger rings — diamonds can be used for fingerprints, too. Ask Boston startup DUST Identity. It just bagged $10 million in a Series A round to create unique security tags for goods ranging from cars to cosmetics using diamond dust and nanotechnology.
The company engineers an atomic defect inside tiny diamonds that helps quickly identify items in a supply chain. The coating of tiny diamonds works like a unique, invisible ID on any item which allows controllers, with the help of an optical scanner cloud-based infrastructure, to trace not only items but also the data associated with them.
"There is a gap of trust between how information flows and the actual source or what actually happens," said Ophir Gaathon, co-founder and CEO of the company.
The MIT spinoff exited stealth in November 2018 with $2.3 million in seed funding led by Kleiner Perkins, which also led the current round. Airbus Ventures Lockheed Martin Ventures, New Science Ventures, Angular Ventures, and Castle Island Ventures also participated in the round.
This capital infusion will be dedicated to developing the product, engineering, devising a go-to-market strategy and growing the customer base across industries.
DUST stands for "diamond unclonable security tag." Gaathon previously founded a company called Diamond Nanotechnologies Inc. Gaathon said that the company has been investing heavily in improving the supply chain in the defense sector and the aerospace industry but did not disclose the names of organizations and brands the startup works with.
