Stardust Power Inc.

Stardust Power Inc.

Stardust Power Inc. was established in 2022 by Chairman and CEO Roshan Pujari with a mandate to build a US-based lithium refining operation. The company emerged against the backdrop of the Inflation Reduction Act and growing Department of Energy interest in supply chain resilience. It initially filed for an IPO in 2023 before pivoting to a traditional de-SPAC process, announcing a business combination agreement with the special purpose acquisition company Global Partner Acquisition Corp II in March 2024. Stardust Power's near-term strategy concentrates on constructing a major lithium refinery capable of producing battery-grade lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide. The company secured a 66-acre site at the Tulsa Port of Catoosa, Oklahoma, with the inlet Waterway River Permit acquired in 2024. The refinery is designed to process both domestic extracted lithium and imported feedstock, targeting the electric vehicle battery supply chain. Ownership of the main processing campus extends the manufacturing footprint, supplementing the headquarters in Greenwich, Connecticut. Team leadership includes Uday Devasper as CFO and Paramita Das as Chief Strategy Officer alongside Pujari. The company listed on Nasdaq under the ticker SDST following the de-SPAC close, raising gross proceeds from the trust account of GPAC II and a committed equity facility. In September 2024, Stardust Power secured its critical water permit, moving the Tulsa refinery from planning to pre-construction — a tangible step for a pre-revenue development-stage company. Stardust Power's structural differentiator lies in its identity as a publicly traded project-development firm rather than a traditional extraction company. By going public through a SPAC before completing its first refinery, the company exposed development risk to stock-market liquidity. That architecture, while unorthodox for heavy industrial buildouts, created a vehicle through which public investors can back US lithium refining capacity.