Nvidias $1 Billion Option Dispute: Does This Early Advisor Have a Case？
In 1993, Nvidia gave an early advisor 25,000 stock options. He now says the company shorted him 9,375 of them, a slice worth about $1.05 billion today. Nvidia never called his paperwork fake, he says. It argued he was 30 years too late. Sponsored Sponsored A Houseboat Demo and a Letter From Jensen Huang The advisor is Eric Gullichsen, a virtual reality pioneer. In 1993, Nvidias founders visited his Sausalito houseboat to see his graphics work. Jensen Huang, Nvidia‘s chief executive, invited him onto its Technical Advisory Board. Huang’s letter offered 25,000 options that “vests over 4 years.” A stock option is the right to buy shares later at a fixed price. Vesting is the timetable for getting that right. The signed option agreement said something else. Gullichsen quotes it vesting fully “upon the expiration of one year from Grant Date.” A former Nvidia advisor says a stock option mistake from 1993 may have cost him more than $1 BILLION. His disputed 9,375 options would be worth roughly $1.01 BILLION today but Nvidia says the decades-old claim came too late. Sponsored Sponsored In April 1996, Nvidias finance chief wrote that only 15,625 options had vested. That matches 10 quarters on a four-year clock. Gullichsen bought those shares and forgot about them. Jensen Huangs 1993
