Clay Announces Second Employee Tender Offer in Nine Months at a $5B Valuation

DST leads employee tender offer as Clay surpasses $100M ARR and continues rapid growth

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Clay, the leading AI go-to-market (GTM) development platform, today announced its second employee tender offer in nine months, giving team members the opportunity to sell a portion of their vested equity for liquidity. The tender offer values Clay at $5 billion, marking more than a 3x increase from the company’s previous tender last spring.

Tender offers — and especially repeat tenders at this pace — are extremely rare in the private market. Clay believes employees should be able to share in the value they create without needing to wait for an IPO or acquisition for their equity to become meaningful in real life.

“This tender is designed to give our team flexibility and real options,” said Kareem Amin, CEO and co-founder of Clay. “Whether it’s buying a home, supporting family, funding a passion project, or simply creating breathing room, we want the people building Clay to grow alongside it.”

The tender will allow employees to sell up to $55 million of Clay shares at the $5B valuation. The program is led by DST, with participation from Conviction, Avra, Operator Collective, and Frontline, alongside a roster of angels and customers including Claire Hughes Johnson (Stripe), Sheila Vashee (Figma), Shishir Mehrotra (Superhuman), and Lenny Rachitsky. The transaction provides liquidity for employees while bringing new long-term investors into Clay as the company enters its next phase of growth.

Clay’s previous tender offer, led by Sequoia, took place at a $1.5B valuation. Since then, the company has scaled rapidly.

Over the past year:

• Clay’s revenue grew more than 3.5x, reaching $100M in ARR in December
• The business was cash-flow positive for parts of the year and earned more in interest than it burned
• Every dollar invested into Clay generates roughly 15x in return, a ratio that has tripled in recent years
• Clay now serves 14,000 customers, with enterprise net revenue retention above 200%
• Clay raised a $100M Series C in August at a $3.1B valuation

“We’re excited to offer liquidity as a way to reward the people who made this growth possible,” Amin added.

Tender offers have traditionally been reserved for late-stage private companies that remain private for many years. In some recent cases, companies have been acquired while employees who built the product saw little meaningful return.

Clay believes equity should be part of the employee journey — not just something that pays off at the very end.

“We’re not building Clay that way,” said Amin. “Companies that hit major milestones should offer employees the ability to benefit along the way, not only after an IPO.”

Some companies worry that early liquidity weakens incentives or leads to churn, but Clay’s experience has been the opposite.

“When people feel trusted, supported, and happy, they stay longer and build with more conviction,” Amin said.

Clay is continuing to grow rapidly and is actively hiring across engineering, product, and go-to-market roles. To learn more, visit: https://www.clay.com/careers.

About Clay

Founded in 2017 by Kareem Amin and joined by co-founder Varun Anand in 2021, Clay is the leading GTM development platform that helps companies turn growth ideas into reality using AI and automation. The platform combines data from 150+ sources with AI research capabilities to enable personalized outreach at scale. Clay is headquartered in New York and serves over 14,000 customers worldwide. Learn more at https://www.clay.com/.

Learn more at https://www.clay.com/.