UK and South Africa-based De Beers Group’s corporate venturing unit has invested an undisclosed amount in starting Electrolytic Ozone, a US-based company that uses synthetic diamonds to sanitise water.
E6 Ventures is the corporate venture fund of Element Six, the supermaterials division of De Beers, which mines and produces the majority of the world’s natural diamonds.
E6 invested in Electrolytic Ozone as part of its spin out from Element Six last year and to fund its first factory in the US. The factory will make ozone generators using synthetic industrial diamonds produced by Element Six for water purifiers, dishwashers, washing machines, kitchen faucets and commercial ice makers as an alternative to chemical or thermal sanitisers.
Susan Wheeler and Brendon Grunewald have also joined Electrolytic Ozone’s board as chairman and director, respectively. Wheeler is the San Francisco-based managing director of E6 who joined the corporate venturing unit earlier this year after nearly four years at private equity-backed mining group Boart Longyear.
Grunewald is head of E6 Ventures and also founder and chief executive of IceVista, an advisory firm based in Belgium.
The rest of the Electrolytic Ozone’s board include its chief executive, Wayne Lieberman, previously executive president of Entorian Technologies, and Bill Yost as chief operating officer and its founder at Element Six.
Also included on the management team are Hossein Zarrin as chief technology officer and Dave Lutz as vice president of engineering.