How to add estimated equity value for PIUs
Full admin and Company editor users on Carta can enable estimated values for PIUs (Profit Interest Units).
This feature provides an approximation of the financial value of a specific interest in an entity, based on the company's overall financial worth.
These estimates are calculated using the entity's per unit value selected when setting up the feature.
Admins control both the source of the data and whether that data is shared with the individual holders.
Navigate to Company Settings and select Estimated Value.
At the top of the page, you will see a visibility toggle that controls whether Estimated Value is visible to holders in their portfolios.
Off – Holders will not see any estimated value data; values remain internal.
On – The estimated value will be displayed on holders’ portfolios alongside their other equity details.
When toggling this setting, click Preview holder experience to open a live preview of how employees or other holders will see the information in their own Carta portfolios.
Below the visibility settings, the Profit Interest Units (PIUs) settings section allows you to choose which underlying metric Carta uses to derive the Estimated Value for all Profit Interest Units (PIUs) in the company.
The available calculation methods are:
Most Recent Funding Round | Uses the latest preferred or unit price from the most recent fundraising event. This reflects the most up-to-date external market valuation and is automatically pulled from your cap table data. |
Latest Fair Market Value (FMV) | Uses the latest FMV determined by the most recent 409A valuation (for corporations) or equivalent fair value assessment (for LLCs). This method ties the estimated value to your compliance-driven company valuation. |
Custom Value (Per Unit) | Allows the admin to manually input a custom value per unit to be applied across all eligible PIUs. This is useful for modeling internal assumptions or providing a tailored per-unit estimate that differs from current FMV or funding round prices. |
Once a calculation method is selected, Carta determines the Estimated Value of each PIU grant using the following logic:
Estimated Value = MAX[(value per unit – threshold per unit) × number of units, 0] The value per unit comes from the chosen method (funding round, FMV, or custom input). The threshold per unit is defined in the original PIU grant data — representing the minimum value that must be exceeded before the unit has economic value. The calculation only applies to PIUs with a per-unit threshold (if a total company-wide threshold is used, Estimated Value will not calculated). After the set up is complete click Update Settings. |
After the set up is complete click Update Settings.