Tender Offers Triple as Startups Push for Early Employee Cash Outs

Tender offers at Series C and later-stage startups have tripled over the past three years, according to a recent study by NewView Capital and Carta. The data indicates a sharp rise in secondary share sales as companies extend their time in private markets. This growth reflects a widening gap between employee expectations for liquidity and the reality of prolonged private status.

To address this shift, NewView and Carta announced a partnership designed to simplify the process of launching and managing these liquidity events. The collaboration merges NewView’s experience in structuring secondary deals with Carta’s equity management platform. Ravi Viswanathan, founder and managing partner of NewView, stated that the goal is to make it easier for chief executive officers and founders to consider tender offers as a standard retention tool.

Viswanathan described early liquidity as a "win-win-win" for employees, companies, and investors. He noted that the traditional recruiting pitch has lost some of its impact. A decade ago, reaching unicorn status was a major draw for talent, but the proliferation of billion-dollar companies has diluted that appeal. He argued that a tender offer allows a company to communicate that employees will receive liquidity during their tenure, not just upon a final exit.

Despite the threefold growth, the practice remains uncommon. The same research found that only 44 tender offers were executed in the first half of 2026. Viswanathan aims to increase that number, viewing tenders as critical for morale and retention. He cited Hightouch, a marketing customization startup, as a recent example. NewView led a tender for Hightouch last year at a $1.3 billion valuation when the company was seven years old.

Other recent participants in these secondary markets include Decagon, an AI customer support firm; Wayve, a self-driving technology developer; and ElevenLabs, an AI voice generator that completed two such offerings in under a year. Viswanathan emphasized that these are no longer exclusive to the most valuable private firms like OpenAI, Databricks, or Anduril. He believes the trend will continue as public listings become less frequent.

The partnership seeks to formalize the mechanics of these transactions. In a tender offer, employees and early investors can sell a portion of their shares at a fixed price to an approved buyer. Viswanathan noted that companies are now staying private for 12 to 15 years. He stated that this timeline is unlikely to change, making internal liquidity mechanisms essential to prevent a talent drain toward public companies.