Key Takeaways
- • Carta and NewView Capital have partnered to simplify tender offers, combining NewView's secondary deal-structuring experience with Carta's equity platform to help startups launch and manage employee liquidity programs.
- • Tender offers for Series C and later-stage startups tripled over the past three years, according to a recent NewView and Carta study.
- • Only 44 startups executed tender offers in the first half of 2026 across Carta and NewView's dataset, indicating the overall share of companies offering them remains small.
- • Recent tender offer participants include Decagon, Wayve, and ElevenLabs, with ElevenLabs executing two offerings in less than a year.
- • NewView founder and managing partner Ravi Viswanathan argues that private companies staying private for 12 to 15 years make employee liquidity essential to prevent talent drain to public companies.
Summary
Carta and NewView Capital have partnered to make it easier for startups to run tender offers, transactions that allow employees, and often early investors, to sell a portion of their shares for a predetermined price to an approved investor. The collaboration pairs NewView's secondary deal-structuring experience with Carta's equity management platform. NewView, which invests in secondary transactions alongside traditional venture deals, positions the partnership as a way to help startups launch and manage liquidity programs more seamlessly, according to TechCrunch.
The partnership comes as startups remain private for longer, leaving employees who receive compensation in stock with limited opportunities to sell. According to a recent study from NewView and Carta, tender offers for Series C and later-stage startups have increased threefold over the past three years. Ravi Viswanathan, founder and managing partner of NewView, said the aim is to make it easier for CEOs and companies to consider tenders, which he describes as a "win-win-win" for workers, companies, and investors.
Adoption nonetheless remains limited. Carta and NewView identified just 44 executed tender offers in the first half of 2026 across their dataset. Viswanathan said the participants are no longer limited to the most valuable private companies such as OpenAI, Databricks, or Anduril. He cited Hightouch, a NewView portfolio company, which held a tender offer at a $1.3 billion valuation last year. Other recent examples include AI customer support startup Decagon, self-driving developer Wayve, and AI voice generator ElevenLabs, which executed two tender offers in less than a year.
Viswanathan argued that tender offers function as retention tools and morale boosters, noting that being a unicorn no longer differentiates a company for talent as it once did. He said that with companies staying private for 12 to 15 years, providing employee liquidity is necessary to avoid a talent drain from venture-backed companies to their public counterparts.
The partnership comes as startups remain private for longer, leaving employees who receive compensation in stock with limited opportunities to sell. According to a recent study from NewView and Carta, tender offers for Series C and later-stage startups have increased threefold over the past three years. Ravi Viswanathan, founder and managing partner of NewView, said the aim is to make it easier for CEOs and companies to consider tenders, which he describes as a "win-win-win" for workers, companies, and investors.
Adoption nonetheless remains limited. Carta and NewView identified just 44 executed tender offers in the first half of 2026 across their dataset. Viswanathan said the participants are no longer limited to the most valuable private companies such as OpenAI, Databricks, or Anduril. He cited Hightouch, a NewView portfolio company, which held a tender offer at a $1.3 billion valuation last year. Other recent examples include AI customer support startup Decagon, self-driving developer Wayve, and AI voice generator ElevenLabs, which executed two tender offers in less than a year.
Viswanathan argued that tender offers function as retention tools and morale boosters, noting that being a unicorn no longer differentiates a company for talent as it once did. He said that with companies staying private for 12 to 15 years, providing employee liquidity is necessary to avoid a talent drain from venture-backed companies to their public counterparts.
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