NewView Capital and Carta have formed a NewView Carta tender offer partnership aimed at making it simpler for startups to launch and run employee tender offers. The arrangement pairs NewView’s experience in structuring secondary deals with Carta’s equity management platform, according to the two companies.
Why employees need a way to sell
Startups are staying private for longer stretches, and that has left many workers holding stock compensation they cannot sell. Ravi Viswanathan, founder and managing partner of NewView Capital, puts the typical private period at 12 to 15 years. Without a liquidity outlet, he warns, private companies risk losing talent to public firms.
A tender offer gives employees a route to sell shares to approved investors at a predetermined price. Early investors sometimes use the same mechanism to sell. The transactions are increasingly common at late-stage startups, though the NewView-Carta study found that tenders still account for a small overall share of activity.
What each partner brings
NewView specializes in secondary deals and venture investments, and the firm has handled the deal-structuring side of tender offers. Carta supplies the equity platform that startups already use to manage cap tables and shareholder records. The partnership is intended to reduce the friction CEOs face when setting up a liquidity program, Viswanathan said.
Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed, and the companies have not specified which startups will use the service next.
Tender activity is rising
Data from a study by NewView and Carta shows that tender offers at Series C and later-stage startups tripled over the past three years. Even so, only 44 tenders were executed in the first half of 2026, a figure that underscores how early the practice remains relative to the size of the private market.
The study did not define the exact boundaries of the Series C and later-stage category, and it did not give the total number of tenders in prior years. Whether the 44 tenders in the first half of 2026 represent growth or a decline is also unclear from the available figures.
Recent examples
Several startups have recently run tender offers. Hightouch held one last year at a $1.3 billion valuation when the company was seven years old, with NewView helping to facilitate the process. Decagon, Wayve and ElevenLabs have also held tenders, and ElevenLabs executed two within less than a year.
The size of the tenders at Decagon, Wayve and ElevenLabs has not been disclosed. The brief list of examples does not include OpenAI, Databricks or Anduril, though those companies are frequently cited in discussions of late-stage private liquidity.
The retention argument
Viswanathan frames tenders as more than a financial transaction. He calls them excellent retention and morale tools, and argues that early liquidity benefits workers, companies and investors alike. A tender also sends a signal to employees that liquidity will eventually be available, he said.
His pitch to founders is that tenders should be viewed as a normal part of running a long-lived private company. A decade ago, reaching unicorn status carried more weight in recruiting. Viswanathan said that distinction is now less of a draw, which puts more pressure on companies to show tangible returns for employee equity.
The NewView-Carta partnership is designed to make launching a tender less of a one-off project for CEOs. Whether it succeeds will depend on how many startups decide that early liquidity is worth the effort.
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