Carta and NewView team up to make it easier for startups to let employees sell shares early
Equity management platform Carta and venture firm NewView have partnered to simplify tender offers, in which startup employees can sell part of their shares. A study finds such deals are becoming more common, though few startups run them.
Carta, which provides an equity management platform, and the venture firm NewView Capital have started a partnership meant to make tender offers easier for startups to run. These are transactions in which employees, and often early investors, sell a portion of their shares at a predetermined price to an approved investor. It matters because startups are staying private for longer, and employees who receive part of their pay in stock cannot sell it.
What the partnership involves
The collaboration combines NewView's experience in structuring secondary deals with Carta's equity platform. NewView founder and managing partner Ravi Viswanathan describes it as a way to help startups launch and manage liquidity programs more smoothly. He hopes it will make it easier for CEOs and companies to consider tenders, and he sees early liquidity as a win for employees, companies and investors alike.
What the data shows
According to a recent study by NewView Capital and Carta, tender offers at Series C and later-stage startups are projected to triple over three years. Viswanathan says they are no longer limited to the most valuable private companies such as OpenAI, Databricks or Anduril. Last year his firm, which specializes in secondary deals as well as standard venture investments, led a tender for HighTouch, a marketing customization startup, at a $1.3 billion valuation when the company was seven years old.
Still, the overall share of startups running these programs remains small: only 44 were executed in the first half of 2026. Companies that have recently held tenders include AI customer support startup Decagon, self-driving technology developer Wayve and AI voice generator ElevenLabs, which carried out two within less than a year.
Why it matters to companies
Viswanathan calls tender offers an excellent retention tool and morale booster. In his view, being a unicorn was enough to attract talent a decade ago, but with so many billion-dollar companies now, that status is less of a draw. He says companies are staying private for 12 to 15 years and that employees need liquidity so talent does not drain to public companies.
