Al Cook

Spear’s Review

At the helm of De Beers, the world’s most storied diamond house, Al Cook finds himself navigating the twin pressures of shifting demand and evolving consumer values.

Cook, who joined in 2023 after senior leadership roles at BP and Equinor, is charged with restoring profitability to a company whose fortunes have been dented by falling rough diamond prices and changing patterns of consumption. His strategy has been to streamline operations, cut overheads and move De Beers further into polished stones and jewellery – a way of capturing more value from the gems it mines.

At the same time, Cook has sharpened De Beers’ positioning as a champion of sustainable and responsibly sourced natural diamonds. The company has withdrawn from lab-grown jewellery in an effort to reaffirm the primacy of mined stones. Yet it has not abandoned its synthetic expertise entirely: in 2025, De Beers invested $130 million in its Element Six technology centre in the US state of Oregon, producing diamonds for use in semiconductors and other industrial applications. Complementing this is its ‘Origin’ programme, which tracks every natural diamond from mine to market. 

The stakes are high: Anglo American, De Beers’ parent company, has halved the company’s valuation in the past two years, and the business remains exposed to global headwinds, including tariffs and slowing US demand. Yet Cook’s mix of pragmatism and ambition is reshaping the narrative. For him, the challenge is not merely to preserve De Beers’ prestige, but to redefine what a diamond company must be in the 21st century.

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