NewView and Carta Launch Joint Program to Simplify Startup Stock Sales

NewView and Carta announced a partnership on October 23 designed to lower the operational barrier for private companies conducting tender offers. The collaboration integrates NewView’s expertise in secondary transactions with Carta’s equity management software to streamline the process for issuing and processing stock sales.

Tender offers allow employees and early investors to sell a portion of their shares at a fixed price to an approved buyer. As the interval between a company’s founding and its exit through an IPO or acquisition extends, more late-stage firms are adopting this mechanism to provide employees with access to cash.

Ravi Viswanathan, founder and managing partner of NewView, stated that the goal is to make liquidity programs easier for chief executive officers to initiate. He described the initiative as a "win-win-win" for staff, founders, and investors, emphasizing that early liquidity serves as a retention tool.

Data from a recent study by NewView Capital and Carta indicates that tender offers at Series C and later-stage startups have increased threefold over the past three years. Viswanathan noted that the practice is no longer confined to the highest-value private firms like OpenAI, Databricks, or Anduril. He cited Hightouch, a marketing customization startup, as an example. NewView led a tender for Hightouch last year at a valuation of $1.3 billion when the company was seven years old.

Despite the growth, the practice remains uncommon. The study found that only 44 tender offers were completed in the first half of 2026. Viswanathan argued that the standard recruiting pitch has weakened because the number of billion-dollar companies has grown, making the label less distinctive. He said a tender allows a company to tell candidates, "you will also get liquidity in your journey with us."

Recent participants in the program include Decagon, an AI customer support startup; Wayve, a self-driving technology developer; and ElevenLabs, an AI voice generator that conducted two offerings in less than a year. Viswanathan said companies are now staying private for 12 to 15 years, a trend he expects to continue. He added that liquidity is necessary to prevent high-quality venture-backed firms from losing talent to public companies.