(Bloomberg) -- Wall Street has spent months debating how much SpaceX is worth. Behind the scenes, a different challenge has occupied the institutions responsible for bringing it public: preparing the plumbing systems needed to support what could become the largest IPO in history.

S&P Global Inc.’s Equity Bookbuild group, which helps underwriters capture and allocate investor demand during initial public offerings, has spent weeks expanding the efficiency and capacity of its infrastructure ahead of SpaceX’s Friday trading debut. At Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., staff plan to spend the weekend monitoring systems and communicating with industry peers.

SpaceX amplifies those demands. The company is expected to attract outsized interest from institutions, retail investors and exchange-traded funds alike. The offering has already generated more orders than shares available, according to people familiar with the matter, raising expectations that trading volumes could rank among the largest ever seen for a newly public company.

At S&P Global’s Equity Bookbuild platform, preparations began roughly six weeks ago. The team used artificial-intelligence tools to identify potential bottlenecks and capacity constraints in what executives described as a “premortem” exercise designed to uncover weaknesses before they emerged in live trading. The result: a tripling of order-handling capacity and a fourfold improvement in response times. 

“The biggest worry is slowness in the system, orders not getting booked,” said Darren Thomas, head of enterprise solutions at S&P Global Market Intelligence. 

The memory of past mishaps still lingers. The 2012 IPO of Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms, was marred by technical failures that left traders uncertain whether orders had been executed. More recently, exchange outages and bouts of volatility have highlighted how quickly disruptions can cascade across markets increasingly dependent on technology.

Nasdaq Inc., a listing venue for both Facebook and SpaceX and thousands of other IPOs in between, declined to comment.  

For market operators, attention often extends beyond major exchanges or clearinghouses. A smaller broker, market maker or service provider that proves less prepared than its peers can quickly become a source of disruption, according to Frank La Salla, president and CEO at DTCC. 

Because clearinghouses sit at the center of the financial system, DTCC’s focus has been on ensuring the broader ecosystem is prepared as much as on its own capacity. The firm has been conducting industry-wide coordination exercises and stress tests, including simulations designed to ensure its systems can process volumes roughly double the peak average during a period. 

After SpaceX’s Friday launch, DTCC will have staff monitoring screens all weekend on the stock’s clearing and settlement. Even a minor operational problem at a single participant can ripple through the system because of the market’s interconnected structure. It’s all part of an effort that La Salla describes as “watch parties” to ensure a smooth ride with the IPO.

“The way we de-risk this, is by what we’re doing — watch parties, industry meetings,” he said. “If one party or two parties has a problem, we know about it right away. And then we as an industry could address it and smother it so that it doesn’t hurt the entire ecosystem.”

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