Botswana’s 2,488-carat Motswedi diamond, the second-largest diamond anyone has ever discovered, has finally sold nearly two years after Lucara Diamond recovered it from its Karowe mine.
Canadian miner Lucara confirmed the sale in its second-quarter 2026 results. The company reported $41 million in quarterly revenue, including proceeds from Motswedi, but didn’t disclose the buyer or the amount it received for the stone specifically.
That distinction matters: the $41 million represents Lucara’s total Q2 revenue, not Motswedi’s sale price.The transaction closes an unusually long sales process for a stone whose extraordinary size made conventional diamond valuation difficult.
Lucara discovered the diamond at Karowe in August 2024. Miners initially reported it at 2,492 carats before cleaning reduced its confirmed weight to 2,488.32 carats.
The Gemological Institute of America (GIA) examined the diamond in Botswana in July 2025 and confirmed it as the second-largest diamond anyone has ever recovered, behind only the 3,106-carat Cullinan found in South Africa in 1905.
GIA described Motswedi as a transparent, light-brown, gem-quality Type IIa diamond containing several large high-quality sections with relatively few inclusions.Its rarity, however, made selling it harder rather than easier.
Lucara had warned investors that monetising diamonds above 1,000 carats could take considerable time because of the analysis, marketing, cutting, polishing and sales processes involved. Motswedi stayed in the company’s inventory through 2025, still unsold at the end of the first quarter of 2026.
For stones this large, buyers must weigh not only the rough diamond’s overall weight but how many valuable polished stones they can eventually extract from it without destroying significant sections.
The eventual buyer could also choose to preserve part or all of the stone because of its historical importance. GIA called Motswedi a diamond of “historical significance,” noting that it’s also the largest known single diamond crystal.
Motswedi’s sale lands at a difficult time for Botswana’s wider diamond industry.Weak global demand and competition from cheaper laboratory-grown diamonds have pressured natural diamond prices and government revenues.
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Botswana entered 2026 holding about 12 million carats of diamond inventory, nearly twice its targeted maximum stock level of 6.5 million carats, according to the country’s finance ministry.
That pressure matters because diamonds remain central to the country’s finances. They normally generate around one-third of Botswana’s government revenue and three-quarters of its foreign-exchange earnings.
The finance ministry projected mineral revenue for the 2025/26 financial year at about 10.3 billion pula, well below the historical annual average of 25.3 billion pula, as weaker diamond sales hit the sector.
Mass-produced natural stones increasingly compete with lab-grown alternatives on price. A 2,488-carat diamond of Motswedi’s rarity has almost no direct substitute. That scarcity can draw specialist collectors, luxury houses and other buyers even when the wider natural-diamond market struggles.
In July 2026, Lucara recovered another diamond initially weighing 1,305.4 carats, later recorded at 1,303 carats after cleaning. It became the 10th diamond weighing more than 1,000 carats that Karowe has produced since operations began.
Karowe has previously produced the 1,109-carat Lesedi La Rona, the 1,758-carat Sewelô and the 813-carat Constellation. Lucara says the mine ranks among the world’s leading sources of exceptionally large, high-quality diamonds.
The company is now investing heavily to take production underground as the existing open pit approaches the end of its life.
Lucara expects open-pit mining to end in the fourth quarter of 2026, while its underground project aims to extend Karowe’s mine life to 2038. The company expects full underground production in the first half of 2028, at an estimated cost of $779.2 million.
Lucara CEO William Lamb said the latest giant recovery reaffirms the quality of the Karowe resource and its potential to keep producing rare, high-value diamonds.
For Botswana, that matters beyond individual record-breaking stones. At a time when its traditional diamond business faces weaker demand and mounting pressure from synthetic alternatives, exceptional discoveries such as Motswedi give the country something laboratory-grown diamonds can’t easily reproduce: extreme natural scarcity.
The buyer and final price of Motswedi remain undisclosed, but after almost two years on Lucara’s books, one of the most remarkable diamonds ever unearthed has finally found an owner.
