Jacques Voorhees

Business

In 1983, a decade before the World Wide Web, I launched Polygon, an electronic trading network for the diamond industry. Here are the companies I’ve founded since, along with what the press had to say about them.

  1. 1983 – 2004

    Polygon

    Founder, President & CEO

    The diamond industry’s first business-to-business electronic trading network, running more than a decade before the World Wide Web. It began in New York as a joint venture with Xerox, moved to Dillon, Colorado, and by 1997 served thousands of trading subscribers and hosted some 17,000 jewelers’ websites. Mediagrif Interactive Technologies bought it in 2004, and I later left to start VeriChannel.

    Named one of the jewelry industry’s visionaries of the century by JCK, 1999

  2. 2011

    VeriChannel

    Co-founder & President

    Founded in early 2011 with former GIA president Bill Boyajian and the London diamond broker I. Hennig. VeriChannel built private diamond-trading platforms for the American Gem Society, the Independent Jewelers Organization and Forevermark, De Beers’s diamond brand, and launched DailyDiamondReport.com.

    Ran FMX, Forevermark’s private trading exchange

  3. 2015

    Museum of Diamonds

    Co-founder, Vice Chairman & CEO

    Launched as the Museum of Named Diamonds and later renamed the Museum of Diamonds: a place to record the stories and meaning behind diamonds, whether famous, like the Koh-i-Noor, or personal. IGI later joined as curator-at-large.

    Designated the official registry of named diamonds by the World Federation of Diamond Bourses

  4. 2020

    Icecap

    Founder & CEO

    Turned vaulted, investment-grade diamonds into tokens on the Ethereum blockchain so investors could buy, hold and trade them like any other asset. It later moved its headquarters to Dubai’s DMCC free zone.

    One of the first marketplaces for diamond NFTs

    icecap.diamonds
  5. 2024 – today

    Icecap AI

    CEO

    Makes Sherpa, an AI assistant that learns a company’s website and answers its visitors’ questions like a knowledgeable salesperson. Built first for jewelers, now offered to small and mid-sized businesses everywhere.

    Sherpa debuted at the World Diamond Congress in Singapore, 2026

    icecap.ai

In the press

JCK2026

New AI-Powered Chatbot Is Specifically Designed for Jewelers

“I believe that the world of website navigation is about to become obsolete.”
The New York Times2022

Jewelry Decorates the Metaverse

Jessica Bumpus on jewelry's move into digital collectibles, including Icecap, the diamond NFT marketplace I founded in 2020.

Vogue Business2021

Can NFTs work for luxury jewellery?

“The diamond can be bought and sold at the same price level.”
Observer2020

Investing in Diamonds Is a Bad Idea. Can a New Cryptocurrency Change That?

“Diamonds are as different as snowflakes.”
JCK1999

The 20th Century Behind Us: Jewelry’s Visionaries

JCK’s millennium series names me among the jewelry industry’s visionaries of the century, for pioneering jewelers’ use of the Internet through Polygon.

JCK1997

Polygon Web Central

William George Shuster’s profile of Polygon, from its start as a Xerox joint venture in New York to its bet on the web from Dillon, Colorado.

Get in touch

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