Carta and NewView team up on startup tender offers
Original: Carta and NewView partner, hoping to entice more startups to let employees sell shares early
Why This Matters
Secondary liquidity programs are becoming a key talent retention lever as IPO timelines stretch.
Carta and NewView Capital have partnered to simplify employee share-sale programs at private startups. Tender offers tripled for Series C+ companies over three years, yet only 44 were executed in H1 2026.
With startups staying private for 12–15 years on average, employees holding stock options face an indefinite wait for any return. Tender offers — structured transactions letting employees sell a set portion of shares to an approved buyer at a fixed price — are one solution, but running them has historically been complex. NewView Capital and Carta are now combining NewView's secondary deal expertise with Carta's equity management platform to reduce that friction.
Ravi Viswanathan, NewView's founder and managing partner, frames the partnership as a "win-win-win" for employees, companies, and investors. His firm recently helped Hightouch, a marketing-customization startup, run a tender at a $1.3 billion valuation. Other recent participants include AI customer support startup Decagon, self-driving tech developer Wayve, and ElevenLabs, which ran two tender offers in under a year.
A joint NewView-Carta study found tender offers tripled among Series C and later-stage startups over the past three years. Still, adoption is limited: only 44 such transactions closed in the first half of 2026. Viswanathan argues unicorn status alone no longer attracts top talent — offering a path to early liquidity now needs to be part of the pitch.