In several states (such as California, Texas, and Washington), any assets acquired during a marriage are generally considered owned 50/50 by both spouses.

Without this form, a company faces several risks:

• Divorce Complications: If a couple divorces, a judge might award half of the equity to the ex-spouse. The company doesn't want an "accidental" shareholder who isn't an employee or who might be hostile to the business.
• Transfer Restrictions: Most equity agreements have "Right of First Refusal" (ROFR) or specific transfer restrictions. A spouse who hasn't signed the agreement might claim they aren't bound by those rules.
• Voting Rights: The company wants to ensure that the voting power remains with the person actually involved in the business.

The spousal consent can be a separate document, but it is almost always bundled within the same "package" as the grant agreement, as an attachment or an exhibit. 

While the Grant Agreement is the contract between the holder and the company, the Spousal Consent is a side-agreement between the spouse and the company.

How do I use it?

To get started, navigate to Essentials > Manage Equity > Vesting and securities templates.

Once there click on Create document set.

Choose the security type > add the template name > provide the the file and click next.

Wait for a moment while Carta's AI reads the document and places the variable on all the right places.

Once done, make sure that spousal consent related fields are selected. This is key for the spouse to be able to sign the document through Carta.

While reviewing you can click on each page of the document and see how it will look like

Once ready, click Save document set below.

Once the holder accepts the security through Carta, they will be able to add their spouse information.

Add spouse information.

Accept the security.

Once that's done, the spouse will get a one time login via email.

They will then fill out their information, as it was added to the document set.

Finally, once that's done, the holder gets an email confirming their spouse has finished signing the document via Carta.

We’re excited to announce the launch of In-app Securities Account Collection, designed to streamline your next in-kind distributions with enhanced security.

Why is this valuable?

Managing in-kind distributions just got a lot easier. With In-app Securities Account Collection, you can now give your investors a secure, self-service portal to submit and manage their securities account details directly within Carta.

• Investor Self-Service Experience: Your investors get a secure, guided workflow to input and manage their securities account details directly through their Carta profiles, completely eliminating tedious email chains and messy shared folders.
• Built-In Data Validation and Encryption: Sensitive investor data remains secure inside Carta's centralized, encrypted platform. Plus, built-in data validation instantly verifies 4-digit DTC numbers and account formats during setup, preventing errors before they delay settlements.
• Full Traceability Through Data Export: You can now easily track completion status and instantly spot which investors have not yet provided their transfer instructions. You can export a unified list of investor-submitted details before the distribution begins, giving your team complete traceability and peace of mind that nothing is missing.

Who is this available for?

In-app Securities Account Collection is available to all Carta Fund Administration clients and their investors. To get started, invite your investors to log in and self-submit their securities transfer instructions directly in Carta by following the steps in this video:

Once your investors have submitted their securities account details, you can easily export their instructions by navigating to your fund entity’s Partners tab > Export > Export securities accounts.

How do I learn more?

You and your investors can learn more about this feature in our detailed guide within the Carta Support Center.

We are upgrading all our ASC 820 Valuations customers to our new Portfolio Valuations tool, built for the Carta's Agentic ERP.

Our new tool supports your entire end to end valuations process.

• Pull in Financials and Cap table information automatically from Carta
• Leverage CapIQ to get public comps and M&A transactions for your valuation
• Calculate the enterprise valuation using DCF, GPC, M&A, or other methodologies
• Use Carta's waterfall and OPM engine to automate the breakpoints and holdings value calculation
• Finalize your valuation, get automated reports and have the valuation data connect to your SOI and Data warehouse
• Manage your team access with granular permissions
• Get early access to the upcoming Carta Portfolio Valuations Plugin and manage valuations via your preferred AI agent

Speak to your account team about getting access, a walk through of the new product, and how you connect your Valuations to other parts of Carta's ERP.

What’s new?

Starting today Carta Total Compensation customers can add their target bonus and commission data for employees via their HRIS integration (or CSV/SFTP upload)

How do I add my target bonus and commission data?

If you’re using a Rippling integration, your bonus and commission data will sync automatically. Just delete any existing plans under Compensation Plan, and after your next sync, the correct values will appear in Carta.

For other HRIS platforms, contact our support team, and an agent will help set up the integration.

Questions?

If you have any questions about adding your target bonus/commissions data to Carta Total Compensation, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager.

Managing equity documents has always been done by manually editing PDFs or relying on external tools to fill in grant details. With our smart fillable templates workflow that won't happen anymore. Upload your own agreement documents and have Carta automatically populate them with the right data at the time of issuance.

With fillable templates, you can:

• Upload your own PDF agreement (option agreement, exercise agreement, equity incentive plan, PIU or RSA purchase agreement) and have it become the source of truth for document generation.
• Define exactly where each piece of information should appear on the document — using a point-and-click variable placement interface, or let Carta's AI suggest the placements for you.
• Automatically fill in details like stakeholder name, company name, award quantity, exercise price, vesting schedule, expiration date, and signatures — without any manual editing.
• Trust that Carta handles the PDF generation behind the scenes, overlaying each variable at the precise position you defined, every time.

How do I use it?

To get started, navigate to Essentials > Manage Equity > Vesting and securities templates.

Once there click on Create document set.

Choose the security type > add the template name > provide the the file and click next.

Wait for a moment while Carta's AI reads the document and places the variable on all the right places.

Review the document and the variable placement. While reviewing you can click on each page of the document and see how it will look like

Once ready, click Save document set below.

From that point on, whenever a grant covered by that document set is issued, Carta generates a fully filled PDF — inserting the real stakeholder and grant data directly into your template, at the positions you defined.

Who is this available to?

Fillable templates are available to company admins on Carta. 

What's new

Cap table reports are more consistent when run with drafts of PIU or phantom/CBU securities. 

Why is it important

Now drafted securities are consistently handled for fully diluted share counts:

• CBUs from plan are included
• Non‑plan CBUs are excluded
• PIUs from plan are excluded

How does it work

From the Run Reports screen, select Cap Table and choose Include draft securities under Additional Options.

Issuing equity has often felt complex, especially for founders and company admins handling just a few grants at a time. That’s why we’ve improved Carta's  workflow that helps issuing options quickly, confidently, and without needing vast equity expertise.

With this new workflow, you can:

• Follow a step-by-step flow designed for issuing up to five option grants (the most common equity event at early-stage startups).
  
  
• Avoid mistakes with built-in safeguards like template vesting schedules, legends, and warnings for edge cases.
  
  
• Feel confident knowing Carta still maintains compliance and data integrity behind the scenes.
  
  
• Sit back as we pre-fill the draft set with all information we have on the company and stakeholder

How do I use it?

In order to access it, navigate to Essentials → Issue equity → Options → New options draft set

Once there, click on global settings to define the behavior for the whole draft set

Information added to the global settings will apply to all grants within the same draft set

After this is done, start issuing the first grant by selecting the name of the holder. 

If Carta detects you have issued grants to that holder before, information will be filled out automatically in order to simplify the issuance. 

By clicking on the quantity field, it's possible to now see a glimpse of the current holdings for any specific holders.

Once ready, click submit to release the new grants.

If the issuance is for more than five grants, the in app spreadsheet workflow is still available.

Who is this available to?

This feature is now available to all Carta customers. 

We’re excited to make equity administration simpler and more approachable—from day one.

What's New

Company admins can now display the estimated value of the portfolio for PIU holders now.

Why is it Important

Shareholders in PE-backed companies often lack clear visibility and transparency into the current estimated value of their Portfolio holdings; with the expansion of Broad Based Ownership Program, more PE-backed port cos want to provide equity transparency for their employees.

How does it Work

We have deployed the Estimated Value feature, an opt-in tool that allows company admins to display portfolio values to shareholders. Admins maintain full control over the specific values used for portfolio calculations and the overall visibility settings. This initial iteration specifically supports Profits Interest Units (PIU) within PE-backed LLC structures.

• Admin Experience: admin will be prompted to go to this Settings page under: 1) Post Profit Interest equity issuance; 2) Manage Stakeholders actions; 3) Manage Employees actions);

• Holder Experience: holders are able to view the estimated value of the awards allocated vs vesting and view the calculation formula to understand how estimated value is calculated.

To learn more:

https://support.carta.com/kb/guide/en/how-to-navigate-your-carta-portfolio-whXWYxrCaM/Steps/3724605,5040640

Financial Reporting is improving the vesting schedule types supported and updating the UI so it's easier than ever to set it up and generate reports.

What's new?

Milestone award support (Dec 2024)

Milestones are a type of vesting schedule that can be set up at the grant level and that are vested by admins upon holders accomplishing certain achievements. Milestones can be used as a catch all alternative where a performance condition will not suffice. See this support article for information of what vesting schedule types fall under 'milestone vesting' at Carta.

Milestone awards that were granted historically will true up on the next report run in Financial Reporting. Any expense that would have been attached to these historically will be booked in the most recently run period. 

NEW: Mixed-vesting milestone support

We've added support for double-trigger milestone awards, where vesting requires both a milestone condition and a performance condition (non-market or event-based) to be met. Previously, milestone tranches with performance conditions were blocked and produced an error.

Contact 718@carta.com if you would like to discuss how to treat these awards.

Anything else I need to know?

If you have any questions or want to talk to an expert about these new changes, reach out to 718@carta.com. 

We’re excited to announce the release of Biometric KYC Verification, making it significantly easier and faster for LPs to complete their Know Your Customer (KYC) tasks on Carta. 

Why is this valuable?

Move from setup to capital deployment faster. Traditional KYC is a manual hurdle that creates friction for LPs and delays onboarding. This update replaces legacy data entry with a biometric-first workflow—eliminating administrative overhead while ensuring the highest level of data integrity and compliance.

What’s new?

• Instant identity verification: Individual LPs can now verify their identity by scanning a government ID using their desktop or mobile phone—replacing a manual process with a streamlined flow completed in just minutes. 
• Simplified data requirements: For US Investor KYC Due Diligence, we have removed redundant fields to further simplify the process for LPs
• Mobile-first flexibility: Investors can instantly transition from desktop to mobile via QR code to capture high-resolution ID photos, ensuring a higher success rate and faster approvals.

This is available for all Individual entity types across all Investor Services KYC Due Diligence products in all jurisdictions.

How do I use it?

1. Enter KYC: Start the KYC process either within the Subscription Documents or Identity Verification task.
2. Choose a method: Upload a photo of a government ID or scan the provided QR code to take a photo of the ID.
3. Submit: Complete the task in a fraction of the time compared to legacy manual forms. 

Anything else I need to know?

• Existing tasks: LPs who have already started a KYC task will continue with the current form to ensure their progress is not interrupted.
• Manual fallback: If an ID cannot be verified automatically, users will be prompted to try again or can choose to fill out the information manually to ensure no one gets stuck.