Eterneva scored a big deal on Shark Tank last year — then got hit with an equally big controversy.
The unique company was featured back in October 2019, capturing some viral attention for an unusual product that turned the cremated remains of deceased loved ones into artificial diamonds that the customer could display in the place of an urn. As TV Insider noted, the company caught the attention of several of the investors, but it was ultimately billionaire Mark Cuban who decided to dish out $600,000 for a 6 percent share.
Eterneva is getting a rush of new attention after the episode re-aired in July 2020, but those watching on television will miss out on the drama that took place after the episode aired. Grant Mobley, an expert in rare gems, claimed in an interview with the New York Post’ s Page Six that the claim about repurposing remains into diamonds isn’t accurate.
Mobley said that Eterneva is not being honest when it says it is using the remains of loved ones to create the final product, saying that the carbon-based material left over from the cremation process is not enough to create a synthetic diamond. He added that it is charging more than the cost of a natural diamond of the same cut and quality.
Mobley called out Cuban by name, saying that it was unwise of him to dump more than half a million dollars into the company .
“It is a shame to see that Cuban agreed to invest in Eterneva,” he said. “Companies like Eterneva that claim to make synthetic diamonds out of human ashes have been around for more than a decade. But after further research into the process, it has become well known within the jewelry industry that these companies are nothing more than a scam, which is why investments have come from outside the jewelry industry.”
That claim was disputed by Adelle Archer, co-founder of Eterneva, who said that the process actually leaves more than enough carbonates — one of the main building blocks of human bones — to create its products.
Other experts backed the Eterneva’s co-founder, with The Dallas Morning News noting that Eterneva shared a video showing its product being tested in a laboratory, which confirmed its claims.
“The lab found that the samples provided by Eterneva contained 3.28% carbon from ashes from cremation, 36.6% carbon from a hair sample and 16.91% carbon from ashes formed by aquamation — a water and chemical-based alternative to cremation,” the report wrote.