Chris Reilly’s note: SpaceX (SPCX) jumped 19% after IPOing on Friday, and it’s off to another hot start this morning.

For most investors, it's an exciting new stock. For Chris Wood, co-editor of Disruption Investor alongside Stephen McBride, it's more personal than that. I caught up with him to get his take... and to share what he and Stephen are doing about it right now.

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Chris Reilly: Chris, you've been writing about SpaceX for months leading up to its historic IPO. Tell me what this moment actually means.

Chris Wood: I’ve been a space nerd for as long as I can remember. My dad was an aerospace engineer at Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC) who worked on NASA projects, including space shuttle design and mission analysis.

Dad was also what I’d call a “semi-pro” astronomer. He had dozens of telescopes. On clear nights, he’d set a few up in the yard and teach me and my siblings about space. It was way more fun than a book in the classroom.

For my seventh birthday, he gave me my first telescope—a 3.5-inch Celestron refractor. That was just a few weeks after he took me on a late-night trip to view Halley’s Comet in an area with no light pollution.

In August 1989, we went to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California to see the first-ever close-up images of Neptune that the Voyager 2 spacecraft beamed to Earth. I was only 10, but I remember a feeling of awe when I saw the first real-time images of the blue ice giant.

These experiences affected me deeply. And they’ve stayed with me throughout my life. So the SpaceX IPO means a lot more to me than just another ticker hitting the market.

Reilly: So you grew up on space. And now SpaceX is finally public. Why don’t you and Stephen recommend it in Disruption Investor?

Wood: Because growing up on this stuff isn’t a reason to buy the stock. It’s a great company and I love what Elon’s doing, but we have very strict parameters in Disruption Investor. Among other traits, the stocks in our Disruptor 20 portfolio need to profitable. SpaceX isn’t.

And as Stephen’s been saying in these last few Jolts, the valuation is concerning.

Right now, you're paying roughly 100X sales. Artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic, which will also IPO this year, trades at something closer to 20X sales on the private markets and is growing much faster than SpaceX. Of course, Anthropic is the fastest-growing company of its size in history.

At 100X sales, you're paying for a near-perfect future. And there are real risks... Starship execution, xAI integration, the sheer cost of building rockets, satellites, AI data centers, and chip fabs all at once. Any stumble and the stock pays a steep price.

And remember, as Stephen also pointed out, history has a clear verdict on IPOs. It pays to be patient.

Reilly: So what's the move for Disruption Investor members right now?

Wood: While the world fights over a tiny sliver of SpaceX at 100X sales, we’re buying several companies that sell SpaceX the tools necessary to build its future.

Reilly: Give us a sense of what that looks like.

Wood: Two groups. The first is semiconductor capital equipment... the companies that manufacture, test, and inspect the advanced chips that make everything SpaceX is building possible.

Whether an AI data center ends up on Earth or in orbit, it starts with chips. SpaceX's Terafab vision—building the largest semiconductor fab in history with Tesla (TSLA) and Intel Corp. (INTC)—only intensifies that demand.

These companies sell to everyone who's building. You don't have to guess which AI model or chip designer wins.

Reilly: And the second group?

Wood: AI infrastructure... the networking, power, and cooling that make a data center actually work. SpaceX's own Colossus data centers are textbook examples of this kind of extreme-scale buildout.

Orbital AI may be the moonshot, but before data centers move to space, they're being built on the ground. Disruption Investor members own the key companies supplying them. It’s worked out very well so far and will continue to pay off.

Reilly: Thanks, Chris. And reader, if you want to learn more about the companies that will help shape SpaceX’s future, consider signing up for The Jolt.

In it, we cover everything from the chip equipment makers to the infrastructure suppliers helping to build the AI megatrend from the ground up. You can join our mailing list here.

Chris Reilly Executive Editor, RiskHedge