Stardust Power Inc., a Greenwich-headquartered development stage manufacturer of battery-grade lithium products, announced its plans to go public through a merger with Global Partner Acquisition Corp. II (GPAC II) (NASDAQ: GPAC; GPACW; GPACU), a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).
The resulting merger would turn Stardust Power into a publicly listed company on Nasdaq under the new ticker symbol “SDST.” The implied pro forma enterprise value of Stardust Power is expected to be $490 million.
GPAC II is led by executives of Antarctica Capital, an international investment firm headquartered in New York with assets under management of approximately $1.5 billion as of Dec. 31, 2022.
“We are extremely pleased about GPAC II’s business combination with Stardust Power, a pioneering American lithium refiner with impressive growth potential and a massive addressable market,” said GPAC II’s Chairman and CEO Chandra R. Patel. “We believe our track record as a constructive and value-added group makes us compelling partners to enable the Stardust team to execute successfully its public listing and scale to become an industry leader. We support Stardust Power’s mission of providing increased U.S. energy independence and to reduce reliance on foreign sources of lithium.”
“Stardust Power aims to solve one of the largest challenges of the energy transition – reliable access to the critical minerals that will make the transition a reality,” said Roshan Pujari, CEO of Stardust Power. “Refined lithium is the key component in the lithium-ion batteries which make the proliferation of EVs, and decarbonization of transportation, possible. Domestic production of battery-grade lithium is also a crucial factor to American national security and leadership in the energy transition, which Stardust Power is working to address.”
Photo: Preliminary rendering of Stardust Power’s lithium refinery in Oklahoma
