US-based investment and asset management software provider Carta has raised $300m in series E funding from investors including investment banking firm Goldman Sachs’ Principal Strategic Investments unit.
Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz led the round, which also featured Lightspeed Venture Partners, Tiger Global Management, Thrive Capital, Tribe Capital, Menlo Ventures and Meritech Capital. It valued Carta at $1.7bn, the company told TechCrunch.
Formerly known as eShares, Carta’s core business is a platform that helps company founders and investors manage all their equity holdings from a single place.
The company has since created software that helps venture capital firms manage and analyse the operation of their funds and relationships with portfolio companies and limited partners. It also provides clients with regular, updated assessments on private companies’ stock value.
Carta serves some 11,000 companies and 700,000 shareholders. Henry Ward, Carta’s founder and chief executive, told TechCrunch it could potentially add a liquidity element to its services that would help investors more easily trade private shares.
The round took Carta’s total funding to approximately $448m. Meritech and Tribe Capital co-led its last round, an $80m series D in December 2018 that included existing backers Spark Capital, Menlo Ventures, Union Square Ventures and Social Capital, valuing it at $800m.
The company’s earlier backers include Industry Ventures, Draper VC, Expansion VC, K9 Ventures, Elefund, Subtraction Capital, XG Ventures, Kima Ventures, Structure Capital and angel investors Andy Palmer and Scott Banister.
