How to exercise your options on Carta

The signing and issuing of your certificate is handled by your company, not Carta. While many companies sign certificates within 1–2 business days, the timing can vary—especially if the company admin doesn’t log in regularly.

If your exercise request is in the "Pending" status, this means that it is awaiting company approval. Please reach out directly to your company for an update or to request they expedite the process.

Your stock certificate has been generated and linked to your option grant. It’s currently awaiting your company administrator’s signature before being released for you to view and accept.

📌 Certificates are not viewable by stakeholders until the issuing company admin has signed them.

📌 The timeline for signing and issuing certificates is managed by the company, not Carta. Some companies may take longer than the typical 1–2 business days, especially if admins do not log in daily.

📌 If you see a certificate attached to your grant but cannot open it, this means it is still pending the company’s signature.

This message appears because your company hasn’t provided a current Fair Market Value (FMV), which is required to complete your exercise.

You’ll see this message in the following situations:

• Exercising NSO (Non-Qualified Stock Option) grants: FMV is needed to calculate estimated taxes.

• Exercising unvested early-exercisable options: FMV is required to determine tax implications and ensure IRS compliance.

Until your company provides an updated FMV, these types of exercises cannot be processed. Please reach out to your company admin for more information.

A manual (or off-platform) exercise is when you exercise your options outside of Carta’s standard online process. This is typically done in special situations such as:

• Your company is giving you a loan to cover the cost (a “loan-based exercise”)

• Banking or compliance restrictions

• An expired FMV

• Other company-specific requirements

No. Only your company admin can record a manual or loan-based exercise on your behalf. You won’t see an option to do this yourself in Carta.

Yes, to save on wire fees and streamline the process, you can send one consolidated wire for all approved exercises. Carta will allocate the funds based on the approval date and time of each exercise. Just make sure that all wire instructions have the same account number. You do not need to provide a specific reference for each exercise.

If applicable, you can find a breakdown of taxes withheld in relation to your exercise. To do so, navigate to the Portfolio tab in the navigation bar. Within your portfolio, any companies that have issued you securities will be listed. Click into the appropriate company then go to the Holdings tab.

To find details of a specific exercise, click into the exercised grant then click into the Exercises tab on the left. Here you will see a Documents dropdown where you can download the Exercise details document.

If you have questions on the taxes withheld, please reach out to the issuing company.