Jacob & Co. has never made watches for people who want to disappear into a crowd. It makes wristwear for the kind of buyer who treats timekeeping like a spotlight. But every so often, beneath the theatrics and mythology, the brand puts real engineering on the table and forces even the skeptics to pay attention. The new God of Time does exactly that, arriving with a headline that sounds like marketing until you look closer. Jacob & Co. has unveiled the world’s fastest tourbillon.
For decades, the tourbillon has been the ultimate status symbol in mechanical watchmaking. It began as a practical invention meant to fight gravity’s effects on accuracy in pocket watches. In the modern era, it has evolved into something else entirely, a rotating stage that proves a brand can master the most difficult corner of traditional mechanics. Most tourbillons take sixty seconds per rotation. That pace is not just conventional, it is almost sacred.
Jacob & Co. has smashed it. The God of Time’s tourbillon completes one full rotation every four seconds. That is fifteen times quicker than the classic one-minute tourbillon and quick enough to make most high complications feel like they are moving at a lazy crawl.
This kind of speed is not a decorative trick. It is an engineering problem with sharp edges. A tourbillon spinning that fast demands energy, and energy in a watch is never free. Deliver too much power, and the escapement becomes stressed and unstable. Deliver too little and the mechanism stutters, loses amplitude, and starts living on borrowed time.
Jacob & Co. built a new movement for the job, the in-house JCAM60. The tourbillon carriage has been ruthlessly lightened, crafted largely from titanium, with the tourbillon and carriage together weighing just 0.27 grams, despite measuring 12 mm in diameter.
Power delivery is handled with stacked barrels, but the truly important detail is the remontoir d’égalité, a constant-force mechanism that regulates energy reaching the escapement. This is the unglamorous part that separates a serious mechanical record from a stunt. When a mainspring’s output rises early in the power reserve and fades later, the remontoir acts as a governor, feeding consistent energy so the watch maintains a steadier cadence.
Visually, Jacob & Co. refuses to do understatement. The dial is built like a miniature theatre set against a blue aventurine sky, a cosmic backdrop that turns the mechanics into a performance. At the center sits Chronos, the Greek god of time, sculpted in precious metal and engraved by hand with obsessive detail. The figure cradles the tourbillon cage as if the entire complication is his pet experiment.
The case measures around 44.5 mm and is styled after Greek architecture, with ribbed detailing that echoes classical columns. Flip the watch over and the sapphire caseback includes Jacob Arabo’s face, signature, and an inscription that celebrates his 60th birthday.
Only 60 examples will be made. It offers a 60-hour power reserve, 30 meters of water resistance, and comes on a blue alligator strap with a deployant clasp. While the price is available only upon request, it is believed to carry a price tag of $360,000. For that kind of money, you can buy a brand-new Rolls-Royce Ghost. The God of Time is Jacob & Co. in its purest form. Loud in design, ambitious in mechanics, and determined to win attention the hard way, by building something no one else has.
Jacob Arabo: from an immigrant to a leading figure
Arabo’s story starts with a world-time watch gifted by his father when he was around 13. Within a year, he was assisting a local watchmaker, mesmerized by tiny gears and the idea that you could assemble something with your hands and give it life. By 21, he had a tiny Diamond District booth and the hunger to go bigger than “normal” jewelry.
Hip-hop changed the trajectory. In the early 1990s, The Notorious B.I.G. helped crown him “Jacob the Jeweler,” and the name spread through lyrics and celebrity circles. Today, his client list runs from Jay-Z and Drake to Rihanna, Beckham, Messi, and Tom Brady, and God of Time feels like the latest proof that he still builds for the biggest stage.
