In Episode 3 of The SP Show, Dr. Srinivas Popuri sits down with Roshan Pujari, Founder & CEO of Stardust Power, to discuss the hard realities of building a lithium refinery in the US.
This is not a surface-level conversation about lithium demand. It is a grounded discussion on execution, capital discipline, industrial strategy, and what founders, investors, and the wider battery market often underestimate in critical minerals.
Timestamps
- 00:00 Intro
- 01:44 Stardust Power today
- 03:12 From investor to founder
- 04:56 Early mistakes and risk
- 06:43 Muskogee refinery update
- 11:58 Cutting water use
- 13:07 Best early decision
- 15:54 Weekly KPIs
- 18:57 State incentives in practice
- 21:33 What makes a refinery bankable
- 23:06 Reducing dependence on China
- 25:00 Competing with Chinese pricing
- 28:46 Hardest thing to de-risk
- 32:08 Building resilience beyond Washington
- 33:34 Designing for EVs, storage, and data centres
- 35:56 Offtake strategy
- 38:38 What changed under the current administration
- 42:06 Securing customers
- 43:30 A lesson for founders
- 45:05 Investor background as an advantage
- 47:33 Traits of successful founders
- 49:47 Why Oklahoma
- 51:35 Work-life balance
- 53:48 The Pujari Foundation
- 56:40 Rapid fire
Topics covered include:
- What makes a lithium refinery bankable?
- What competing with Chinese pricing really means?
- What is hardest to de-risk at this stage?
- Feedstock, reagents, equipment, and customer risk?
- How Stardust Power has approached water reduction?
- What state incentives mean in practice?
- Why Oklahoma was chosen?
- What long-horizon founders need to get right early?
About Stardust Power Inc.
Stardust Power is a developer of battery-grade lithium carbonate designed to bolster America’s energy security through resilient supply chains. The Company plans to build a strategically located lithium refinery in Muskogee, Oklahoma, with the capacity to produce up to 50,000 metric tons of battery-grade lithium carbonate annually. Committed to sustainability at every stage, Stardust Power trades on Nasdaq under the ticker “SDST.”