Jacob Arabo emigrated from Uzbekistan to Brooklyn in 1979 and opened a small jewellery stall on New York's 47th Street Diamond District in 1986, aged 20. Through the 1990s he became the jeweller of choice for American hip-hop culture, signing pieces for Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z, Kanye West, P. Diddy, and a generation of athletes. His signature was the pavé-diamond "Five Time Zone" wristwatch, a cushion-cased watch with five independently set sub-dials, which he began producing in the late 1990s. Jay-Z's "Jacob the jeweller" line on the 2000 track Hovi Baby turned the brand into cultural shorthand.
The pivot from jeweller to serious watchmaker accelerated in the 2000s, working with Swiss movement specialist Concepto in La Chaux-de-Fonds (who also produces instrument-cluster components for Bugatti hypercars, and whose partnership underpins Jacob & Co.'s 2026 Bugatti Tourbillon). The house's signature haute-complication is the Astronomia (2014), a four-armed cage rotating inside a vertically-oriented case, with a tourbillon on one arm, a rotating Earth on another, a rotating Moon on a third, and an orbital hours/minutes display on the fourth. The Astronomia established Jacob & Co.'s modern identity: engineering spectacle visible from every angle through sapphire apertures.
Today Jacob & Co. produces a deliberately maximalist collection unlike any Swiss manufacture. The Bugatti Tourbillon series (launched 2020) puts a vertical engine-shaped movement in a sapphire case; the Casino (2020) sits a working miniature roulette wheel where the dial would be; the Opera plays a music-box melody ("Godfather," "Phantom of the Opera") at the push of a button; and the Godfather II (2026) combines Casino automata, a roulette wheel, and a double musical movement. Retail pricing runs from ~$25,000 (Epic X Chronograph) through $300,000 to $1M+ (Astronomia and Bugatti variants) and up to several million dollars for one-off sapphire-cased grand complications. Jacob Arabo remains the sole owner and creative director.
