Sarine CEO David Block to Step Down After Nearly a Decade

David Block’s exit matters because Sarine sits in the machinery that turns rough diamonds into trusted, priced inventory. The company said its chief executive will step down on June 30, 2026, after nearly a decade in the top job and close to 25 years altogether with Sarine Technologies Ltd., ending a long internal tenure at one of the trade’s most consequential technology firms.

That influence reaches far beyond a single balance sheet. Sarine is listed on the Singapore Exchange Mainboard and the Tel Aviv Exchange, is headquartered in Hod Hasharon, Israel, and describes itself as a worldwide leader in precision technology for the evaluation, planning, processing, measurement, grading and trading of diamonds and gems. Its labs are built around automated grading for cut, color and clarity, synthetic-diamond detection, light-performance analysis, symmetry analysis, diamond imaging and rough-diamond mapping and modeling. Sarine says its devices scan more than 70 million diamonds a year, a scale that makes even incremental software shifts relevant to pricing and confidence across the pipeline.

Block’s tenure tracked Sarine’s push to turn grading from a largely manual craft into a more data-driven process. Sarine says it was the first to introduce AI-based grading for both color and clarity in 2017, then launched a second generation in 2022, including Sarine Clarity-II and an updated Sarine Color system. In a recent JCK interview, Block said AI will likely replace much of the repetitive work in diamond labs. That is not just a labor story. It is a market-structure story, because the more standardized and repeatable grading becomes, the more the trade can lean on consistency when stones are bought, financed and resold.

The sharpest financial lever sits in rough planning. Sarine launched its Most Valuable Planning software in January 2024 and said it can generate up to 5% added value from polished diamonds derived from rough stones. For manufacturers working parcel by parcel, that kind of uplift can decide whether a cutting strategy protects margin or gives it away. In a market where every point of yield matters, Sarine’s software is not a back-office detail, it is part of the economics of the stone itself.

Sarine has also been pressing harder into traceability through its Diamond Journey program and related webinars with Tracr CEO Wesley Tucker and GCAL by Sarine president Angelo Palmieri. That emphasis comes at a moment when provenance, sanctions scrutiny and origin verification are central to how diamonds are trusted and sold. Block will remain until June 30, so the transition looks orderly, but his departure still marks a handoff from a chief executive who spent years arguing that the future of diamond labs will be shaped less by repetitive human sorting and more by software, data and confidence.