Carta, NewView Team Up to Streamline Employee Tender Offers for Late-Stage Startups

Startups are remaining private for longer stretches, leaving employees with equity that cannot be readily sold. To address this gap, secondary-market specialist NewView Capital has joined forces with equity-management platform Carta, creating a joint solution that simplifies the tender-offer process for late-stage companies and their workers.

The collaboration merges NewView’s experience structuring secondary deals with Carta’s cloud-based cap-table software. Ravi Viswanathan, founder and managing partner of NewView, says the combined offering is intended to make it “easier for CEOs and companies to think about tenders.” He frames early-liquidity programs as a “win-win-win” for employees, founders, and investors, positioning them as a strategic tool rather than a one-off transaction.

Data compiled by the two firms shows that tender offers have risen sharply. Over the past three years, the frequency of such offers for Series C and later startups has tripled, according to a joint study. The surge is not limited to the most valuable private firms, companies like OpenAI, Databricks, and Anduril were early adopters, but the practice is now spreading to a broader set of high-growth businesses.

One recent illustration comes from Hightouch, a marketing-customization startup that reached a $1.3 billion valuation last year. NewView facilitated a tender that allowed employees to sell a portion of their shares, providing liquidity while the company remained privately held and seven years old. Similar programs have been launched by AI customer-support firm Decagon, autonomous-driving developer Wayve, and voice-generation startup ElevenLabs, which executed two tenders within a single year.

Despite the upward trend, the overall adoption rate remains modest. In the first half of 2026, only 44 startups completed tender offers, indicating that the majority of private companies have yet to explore this option. Viswanathan emphasizes that broader use could serve as a retention lever and morale booster, especially as the talent market becomes increasingly competitive.

The backdrop for this push is a shift in the private-company lifecycle. Companies now stay private for 12 to 15 years, a timeline that “is not changing,” Viswanathan notes. With many venture-backed firms competing for the same pool of high-skill workers, offering a path to early liquidity can help prevent talent drain toward public-market rivals. He argues that a tender is “an opportunity to say you will also get liquidity in your journey with us,” moving beyond the historic allure of unicorn status alone.

For founders contemplating the next stage of capital strategy, the Carta-NewView partnership presents a practical framework to design and administer secondary liquidity programs. As the ecosystem matures, the ability to provide employees with a clear exit route may become a differentiator in hiring and retention, potentially reshaping compensation structures across the private-tech landscape.