Vietnamese electric vehicle maker VinFast has made its debut on the Nasdaq, and its shares soared to push its stock market valuation past Ford and General Motors on its opening day of trading.

Here's what we know about VinFast and its push to make it in the crowded EV market:

VinFast is Vietnam's first homegrown car manufacturer. It has launched two electric vehicle models in North America, becoming the first-ever Vietnamese car sold in the US market.

It hopes to compete with giants such as Tesla and it began building a factory in the US state of North Carolina last month. The carmaker is a subsidiary of Vietnam's largest private conglomerate, Vingroup, which is owned by the country's richest man, Pham Nhat Vuong.

Vuong started out selling dried noodles in the former Soviet Union before amassing a $5 billion fortune from enterprises in a range of sectors including real estate, tourism and education.

Once his focus shifted to cars with the launch of VinFast in 2017, he transformed a muddy patch of swampland near northern Vietnam's port city of Haiphong into a state-of-the-art factory within two years.

The factory was kitted out with 1,200 robots, German, Japanese and Swedish machinery, and a global team from auto giants including BMW and General Motors.

However, in 2022 VinFast posted a loss of $2.1 billion.

Shares of VinFast -- trading under the ticker "VFS" -- entered the market Tuesday at $22 and rose sharply, closing at more than $37. That gave it a market value of around $85 billion after the day's trade, much higher than Ford's $48 billion valuation and General Motor's $46 billion.

Vuong's wealth jumped by $39 billion, according to Bloomberg.

He owns about 99 percent of the company's shares, meaning only a small number are being actively traded which makes them prone to big price swings.