You are ultimately responsible for asserting your contractual rights. Your stock options had an expiry and you did not exercise them in time. The letter you received notifying that you had 15,625 vested options was not an award in of itself, it was only a courtesy notifying you that you had vested options to exercise before they expired. Even if due to ambiguous wording it could be argued that 25,000 options had vested at the time instead of 15,625, that was only relevant until the options expired. You needed to assert your rights to the [additional 9,375] vested options before they expired. So, this issue died in 1996.
I had a similar experience although over a shorter time horizon. I was in a dispute with a corporation which prompted me to pore over every word in every previously signed agreement. I discovered, due to an obvious typo in a stock option agreement, more options had vested than had been intended. After some pushback, they eventually relented and awarded me the options.
Given the amount of money involved, it was worth engaging lawyers to see if NVIDIA would pay you some money to save the hassle of dealing with it, but there is and was zero prospect of this ever being awarded in your favor by a court since the options expired.
The article states that they exercised their options.
No, it doesn't.
https://colo.to/exercise.pdf
They exercised 15,625 options of the 25,000. The OP sent $781.25 to NVIDIA. The remaining 9,375 options were not exercised, they expired 90 days after April 16th 1996.
Only in hindsight, 30 years later, has the OP realized that the other 9,375 had vested due to ambiguous wording in the agreement. The article is about the 9,375 that were not exercised.
So 15,625 were exercised.
Yeah. The issue being that at the time both the CFO and their external counsel Cooley told me in writing that 15,625 shares had vested. Those representations were incorrect. And I (quite reasonably) replied on them rather than checking the original documents. Which I did only 30+ years later. In legal terms, the CFO Gani’s 1996 letter is a negligent misrepresentation, a species of fraud under Cal. Civ. Code § 1709-1710.
Well, the bad news is that the statute of limitations on that appears to be three years in California.
What happened to 15,625 shares you did exercise? I guess they are worth over $1.5 billion as of today?
I would venture the fate of the bygone shares would be the same as those 15,625. Sold early. Paperhands (aren't most of us?).
I imagine he sold all of it by now
If he's arguing that he could effectively revoke his past final decision to sell it all at not-billions by demanding withdrawal of hypothetical now-billions from NVIDIA, I wouldn't be sure what system will happily grant him that...
He's saying they didn't actually get exercised as-in stock was never made his. They took the money and didn't issue him the shares, but the statue of limitations is gone on the fraud.
No that’s not what’s being said. Nvidia gave him the wrong total. He paid for that total. He’s saying there’s a world in which he is owed the other 9k shares. He put some lawyers on it and it turns out it won’t be this world.
oops, yeah. I understood that wrong.
> replied on them
I think this is a typo.
> And I (quite reasonably) replied on them rather than checking the original documents.
Putting aside the fact that any claims here are almost certainly time barred after 30 years, ostensibly, your attorney explained to you that because you had the grant in your possession, claiming that you reasonably relied on the company's statement about what the grant said would weigh heavily against any misrepresentation or fraud causes of action in a lawsuit.
Equitable tolling??
Might as well sue.
I'm no expert, but did your lawyers clarify if a statute of limitation start from the date you learned there might be a discrepancy, instead of all those years ago?
While no one's hands might be clean in this, at the end of the day the party with the resources and expertise is equipped differently.
It might not hurt to get some more opinions even if they end up in the same place.
This does not apply because he was in possession of the agreement (grant document) the whole time. You don't get a decades long extension of the statute of limitations because you neglected to check what an agreement in your possession actually said.
They learned about it when they signed the contract. Saying “I forgot about it“ doesn’t reset the statute of limitations.
I've never been on either side of one of situations, but if the company is doing well, why doesn't the company just take care of the human? These don't really seem like opening-the-flood-gates types of decisions and companies could just choose to do if they wanted to, right?
You don't see the risk that is created when you allow unexercised options get called at a later date, when they're in the money, because the company is 'doing well'?
The options are exercised. OOP didn't do any diligence, got shorted, cared too late.
No, I guess I don't. The companies can choose to do what they want and I think they can make a different decision based on how well they are doing. I don't know. They don't have to, but I don't see why they couldn't.
If that were the case, why would anyone pay to exercise options ever again?
So that they aren't relying on a company to choose to do something out of kindness.
Correct.
The last time someone decided that an option shouldn't expire got us inflation, unemployment, inequality and a debt crisis.
Good thing that we stopped right???
Looks at the funding rate of his options in his wallet that he uses to buy things at the supermarket. Still no funding rate in sight.
One of the reasons such companies do well is they don't entertain "such things". Sad. But that's besides the point.
Not taking about $5k or even $5m. A billion dollars is a hell if a lot of money.
The shares are worth what their worth. People would have lost their minds and then everyone would have moved on. Is NVIDIA filled with more billion dollar typos? I don't think so, but I wouldn't care if it was.
This ain’t David va Goliath. It’s two billionaires fighting it out.
Unless of course the op sold the 15k shares he did get years ago.
A few do, I’ve been really lucky to work with a startup that got acquired earlier this year and took really great care of the whole team, even people whose options didn’t vest yet. After reading so many horror stories of acquisitions that was a relief to see the whole leadership and team work together to ensure people are taken care of.
I wish that was the usual situation
I appreciate you sharing your positive experience.
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Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
We don't need you to love capitalism (or billionaires), we just need you to stop posting low-effort flamebait comments like this one (or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49840585). You may not owe capitalism or billionaires better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.