Software giant Atlassian becomes one of Australia's largest companies overnight

Australian software company Atlassian has become the one of the nation's largest companies overnight, after it listed on the Nasdaq stock market in the United States on Friday.

After floating in the early hours of Friday morning(Australian time), Atlassian hit a share price of 27.78 U.S dollars, up from its list price of 21 U.S. dollars, and raised over 462 million U.S. dollars during its first day of trading.

Within the space of hours, the company has now been valued at just under 6 billion U.S. dollars, placing it as Australia's largest tech company, and worth as much as Australia's national airline and flag carrier, Qantas.

It is also now comfortably worth more than Australian brand Coca-Cola Amatil, and Australian wine giant Treasury Wine Estates.

For owners Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes, they now find themselves nestled among Australia's top 20 wealthiest people.

Atlassian is a software tech giant responsible for programs such as Bitbucket, Confluence, HipChat and JIRA, pioneering the use of the cloud in delivering software to clients.

From humble beginnings opening up a small office in Sydney, the duo in charge of the operation have launched offices in Brazil, Malaysia, the UK, Poland, the Netherlands and the United States, and now employ almost 1,200 staff worldwide.

After the successful float, Farquhar told the press that he and Canon-Brookes want to steer the company to become bigger and better, saying the news today was just the beginning.

"The IPO is not so much about the money, it's about transitioning to the public stage and building an amazing company," Farquhar said.

"We're just getting started." Endit