NewView and Carta join forces to simplify startup share sales

NewView and Carta announced a partnership on October 23 to streamline the process of selling employee stock in private companies. The collaboration combines NewView’s experience in structuring secondary transactions with Carta’s equity management platform. This integration aims to reduce the administrative burden on founders who wish to offer liquidity to their staff before an initial public offering or acquisition.

The central mechanism for these transactions is the tender offer. In this arrangement, employees and early investors can sell a portion of their shares at a fixed price to an approved buyer. As the duration between a company’s founding and its exit has extended, more late-stage startups are utilizing this method to provide cash flow to their workforce.

Ravi Viswanathan, founder and managing partner of NewView, stated that the partnership is designed to help companies launch and manage liquidity programs with greater ease. He described early liquidity as a mutual benefit for employees, companies, and investors. Viswanathan noted that a tender offer serves as a tangible commitment to employee financial well-being during the long tenure of private ownership.

Research from NewView Capital and Carta indicates that tender offers among Series C and later-stage startups have increased threefold over the past three years. Viswanathan observed that these deals are no longer exclusive to the highest-valued private firms, such as OpenAI, Databricks, or Anduril. He cited Hightouch, a marketing customization startup, as a recent example. NewView led a tender offer for Hightouch last year at a valuation of $1.3 billion when the company was seven years old.

Despite the growth, the practice remains limited in scale. The same research found that only 44 tender offers were executed in the first half of 2026. This figure represents a small percentage of eligible startups. Viswanathan argued that increasing these opportunities is essential for retention and morale. He noted that the traditional appeal of joining a future unicorn has diminished as the number of billion-dollar companies has grown.

Recent participants in tender offers include Decagon, an AI customer support startup, and Wayve, a self-driving technology developer. ElevenLabs, an AI voice generator, conducted two such offerings within a single year. Viswanathan expects the trend of extended private ownership to continue, estimating that companies will remain private for 12 to 15 years. He emphasized the need for internal liquidity options to prevent talent from moving to public companies.

The partnership represents a structural shift in how private companies handle employee equity. By linking deal structuring directly with equity data, the firms aim to lower the barriers to entry for startups considering their first tender offer. This development occurs against a backdrop of prolonged private market cycles and a growing demand for early cash-outs among venture-backed employees.