Carta customers accuse platform of trading shares without consent

The news: US cap table management company Carta has been accused of trying to trade its customers’ shares without consent, the Financial Times reported.

The numbers: Carta, last valued at USD7.4 billion ($11 billion) in a 2021 funding round, helps startups manage their capitalisation (or cap) tables, as a record of who owns the company.

The context: Karri Saarinen, co-founder of software startup Linear, claimed Carta started approaching his investors on Friday without consent. In a post on X, Saarinen said that Carta “is now doing cold outreach to our angel investors about selling Linear shares to their buyers”. It has since emerged that two other startups using the Carta platform have also been affected by the same issue.

What they said: Carta chief executive Henry Ward responded to Saarinen’s post to say he was “appalled that this happened” and that the company was investigating what it said appeared to be a rogue employee violating its policies.