Brice Wallace
A financial technology company will add up to 464 jobs in Utah during the next five years, outnumbering its current headquarters headcount.
Carta, which offers an online platform converts paper stock certificates into electronic shares and allows company to manage equity electronically, announced the expansion project after being approved for a state tax incentive of about $1.14 million by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) board at its November meeting.
Carta changed its name earlier this month. It previously was known as eShares Inc.
Mel Lavitt, chairman of the GOED board’s incentives committee, described Carta as “an extremely innovative company.” The Utah jobs will be primarily focused on customer service, sales, marketing, financial analysis and engineering, he said.
Founded in 2012, the company says it is “pioneering the category of ownership management by making it simple for companies of all stages to turn their employees into owners,” and says its mission is “to consolidate private company ownership onto one common electronic registry.”
The company has 300 employees, with offices in Palo Alto, California (its headquarters); Rio de Janeiro; New York City; San Francisco; Seattle and Salt Lake City. Its customers include more than 5,000 venture-backed companies, at which 100 billion electronic shares have been issued to more than 140,000 shareholders through the eShares platform. It has raised $67 million in venture capital so far.
Sumeet Gajri, Carta’s chief of staff, told the GOED board that the company had been evaluating potential sites for the project for about four months and expects the Utah office to be the company’s largest within three years. So far, 20 employees have expressed interest in relocating to Utah, he said.
“We’re really excited to be coming to the city of Salt Lake and the state of Utah,” he said. “We were really impressed with the level of talent of people in technical and nontechnical here.”
As part of the evaluation process, the company posted job positions in five cities. “The level of talent that we were able to find here in Utah, both in financial services and R&D, surpassed the other four cities and was far above it. … We think that by hiring here, we’ll have a very good local workforce and we’ll be able to bring in talent from outside of the state to supplement as well,” Gajri said.
The $5.7 million Utah expansion is expected to result in jobs paying an average of $67,224 a year. The project is projected to result in a total of $122.7 million in new wages over five years and new state tax revenue of more than $5.7 million during that time. The company has not yet selected a site for the project.
“Utah’s universities provide some of the finest education and training in the country and as a result produce some of the top talent in the fintech and technology industries,” Val Hale, GOED’s executive director, said in a prepared statement. “Carta is growing quickly and is eager to tap into Utah’s talented workforce to support its rapid growth and innovation.”
“Utah’s continued success in the finance and technology industries have fostered the growth of fintech in Utah,” said Theresa Foxley, president and chief executive officer of the Economic Development Corporation of Utah. “Carta’s investment in Utah is another sign that there is a positive outlook on fintech growth within the state.”