Supersonic 🚀

ISRO's 100th, Zepto’s Shift, and A Fusion Bet.

🗓 Morning, folks,

2025 continues to prove a roller coaster year, or in Wall Street speak, volatile.

📉 India bounced back a tiny bit yesterday, with the sensex jumping 0.81%, and the Nifty50 adding 0.64%. Not enough for the Nifty to cross 23,000.

Here’s what’s weighing on things: earnings haven’t exactly been stellar. On top of that, it’s budget week — hardly the time to get overly bold.

💡 Spotlight: India’s digital revolution continues to soar. UPI payments accounted for 83% of all digital transactions by volume in 2024, up from just 34% in 2019.

💰Anyway, easy news day today. Let’s get through it and leave you to better things.

1 Big Thing: JSW mines copper ambitions ⚒️

JSW Group is diving into the copper mining business with a ₹2,600 crore bet, renting mines for operation and development from Hindustan Copper.

The company has snagged a 20-year MDO (Mine Developer and Operator) contract for two mining blocks in Jharkhand, marking its entry into India’s non-ferrous metal sector.

Backing up: Copper is the universal metal of electrification and a clean future. EV’s, Data Centers, Renewables, Real Estate, Factories, everything needs copper and tons of it.

• Consider this: an average EV needs 80kgs of copper, nearly four times a conventional vehicle.

And it takes decades to bring a new copper mine to production, markets project a potential deficit for copper supply in a few years.

The deets: the mines are owned by Hindustan Copper and will have an ore capacity of 3 million tonnes per annum once fully operational by 2027.

JSW will also build a copper concentrator plant on-site, managing everything from capital expenditure to operations. In return, Hindustan Copper will offer technical expertise and take a revenue share.

The backdrop: India imports a significant portion of its copper concentrate and in FY24, Indonesia was the largest copper concentrate supplier to India, at 35 per cent of total imported.

JSW’s entry could help reduce reliance on imports.

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2. Air travel’s groundbreaking leap 🚀

For over six decades, commercial airplanes have remained largely the same, getting safer and slightly lighter, but not significantly faster. That changed yesterday.

YC-backed Boom Supersonic became the first private American company to test a supersonic passenger jet yesterday.

Boom’s independently developed XB-1 prototype broke the sound barrier, reaching supersonic speeds just 12 minutes into flight at 35,000 feet.

Context: Supersonic speeds are speeds that travel faster than sound, which is about 768 miles per hour at sea level.

Yes, but: supersonic air travel has had a rough past. The french were one of the first to bring this technology to market in early 2000s via the Concorde jet, which ended up getting scrapped after a fatal crash left 100+ people dead.

What’s next: Boom is now focusing on its commercial airliner, Overture, which aims to fly passengers anywhere in the world in under four hours, for just $100 per seat.

3. Helion powers ahead ⚡

Helion Energy closed a $425 million Series F round, boosting its valuation to $5 billion.

The deets: Helion develops commercial fusion reactors and unlike traditional fusion reactors that rely on steam turbines, Helion’s Polaris reactor converts fusion energy directly into electricity using magnetic bursts.

Backed by heavyweights like Sam Altman and Microsoft, Helion is racing to deliver commercial fusion power by 2028—a timeline that blows competitors out of the water.

Think of it as an energy shortcut, eliminating inefficiencies. Polaris, its seventh prototype, is already up and running, and the plan is for each reactor to generate 50 megawatts of power—enough to light up tens of thousands of homes.

Why it matters: fusion has been the holy grail of clean energy for decades. If Helion delivers, it could change the global energy game, providing near-limitless power without greenhouse gas emissions.

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What else are we snackin’ 🍿

🚀 100th Launch: ISRO achieved a huge milestone with its 100th mission, successfully launching a next-gen navigation satellite from Sriharikota.

🍏 Apple’s new forge: Apple is reportedly in talks with Bharat Forge to manufacture components in India.

🧬 Teaming up: LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman joined forces with cancer researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee to launch an AI-driven drug discovery startup.

That’s a wrap! Don’t let the weekday blues get to you.

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