The calculus around secondary stock sales just shifted. AI startups like Clay and ElevenLabs are now using tender offers as weapons in the war for talent, letting employees cash out early rather than enriching only founders. It's a marked departure from the 2021 boom, when founders pocketed millions while staff watched from the sidelines. As companies stay private longer and competition for AI talent intensifies, early liquidity is becoming less about founder windfalls and more about keeping your best engineers from jumping ship to OpenAI or Google.
Clay is cashing in its chips again. The AI sales automation startup just told employees they can sell stock at a $5 billion valuation, according to reporting from the New York Times. That's a 60% jump from the company's $3.1 billion valuation announced in August, and more than triple the $1.5 billion price tag from its first employee tender offer last May.
It's the second time in eight months that Clay has opened the liquidity spigot for staff. The eight-year-old company, which tripled its annual recurring revenue to $100 million in just one year, is betting that letting employees convert paper gains into real money will keep them from bolting to better-funded rivals.
Clay isn't alone in this strategy. ElevenLabs, the three-year-old voice AI startup, authorized a $100 million secondary sale for employees at a $6.6 billion valuation - double its previous value. And Linear, a six-year-old AI-powered project management tool competing with Atlassian, completed a tender offer matching its $1.25 billion Series C valuation.
