SpaceX officially launched as a publicly traded company Friday morning on the NASDAQ exchange, and Elon Musk’s company carries the largest valuation ever seen for a Wall Street debut.

By the time Wall Street closed, SpaceX saw its stock price gain almost 20 per cent to roughly US$161 compared to the initial price of $135, and the company had a value of more than $2 trillion by market cap.

This also made Musk the world’s first trillionaire based on his large ownership of the company.

SpaceX has its sights set on some major projects, including more rocket launches both manned and unmanned, construction of AI infrastructure in space along with satellites, ambitions of lunar landings and even missions to Mars.

These projects come at a hefty cost, and the IPO (Initial Public Offering) is expected to provide capital funding for many of these projects depending how popular it becomes.

But what makes this launch so distinct?

At least one investing expert says SpaceX becoming a publicly traded company is more than just an investing story because “it touches the human spirit.”

“One can’t help but get excited about the new frontiers and what they’ve been able to accomplish,” says Paul MacDonald, president and co-chief investment officer at Harvest ETFs.

“The space frontier is something that there has not been a lot of investable options for people, but just the sheer broad interest, from a human perspective, I think that has captured a broader interest than perhaps just the investment industry.”

SpaceX priced its shares initially at US$135 each, which made the total value of the company approximately $1.75 trillion dollars at the time, and based on the number of shares that will eventually be available to buy. Only about $75 billion worth of the shares that make up that total were made available Friday.

“It’s by all accounts a massive, massive company. Not only is it the largest IPO in history, but it’s the largest by order of magnitude,” says portfolio manager and chief investment officer Josh Sheluk at Verecan Capital Management.

“Typically a company becomes public and it gradually grows in size. Maybe it starts at five billion or 10 billion or 20 billion, or even a hundred billion dollars worth of company. Now you have a company that’s again, potentially IPOing at a $1.75 trillion valuation, which forces it to be one of the largest positions in all these indexes right off the bat.”

Bloomberg is also reporting that level of demand, or the amount of money buyers are potentially putting forward to buy a piece of SpaceX,  is about $350 billion. That’s compared to the approximately $75 billion worth of shares initially listed.

Stocks sank for some other companies involved in space as SpaceX entered the niche market.

On Friday, shares of Rocket Lab Planet Labs slumped about eight per cent each as of 1:30p.m. Eastern time , while Intuitive Machines plunged 11 per cent. AST SpaceMobile, a much smaller rival to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite business, fell more than 12 per cent.

Aerospace and space travel company Virgin Galactic sank some 28 per cent. The stock, with a ticker similar to SpaceX’s ‘SPCX’, surged more than 20 per cent on Thursday, with some pointing to a boost from investors confusing it with SpaceX.

Many day traders on the floor of Wall Street and arm-chair investors alike will be able to get a chance to own a piece of SpaceX while limited shares last.

“Most of the shares will become available for sale over the course of the year. And so that might change the balance of supply and demand,” said equity analyst Nicolas Owens at Morningstar speaking to Reuters.

“And then everyone will be monitoring these operational milestones around starship reusability, the commercial model for data centers in space.”

Friday is only the first day for SpaceX as a publicly traded company, and although it seems to be a mostly winning day for the stock on Wall Street, the speculative nature of some of the projects in the works means there could be some volatility down the line.

In other words, bad days for the stock are also a distinct possibility.

“When you talk about high growth innovative companies, especially with these types of valuations, there’s some speculation and that growth does need to come in over time,” says MacDonald.

“We’re still very excited. There’s going to be with this a lot of volatility in the underlying stock.”

– With files from Reuters