A former Nvidia technical advisor says a one-year vesting clause in his 1993 option grant was honored as a four-year schedule, leaving him short roughly 9,375 pre-split shares that would be worth about $1 billion today. Eric Gullichsen, who joined the company's Technical Advisory Board at its founding, published the claim on his blog after Nvidia rejected a settlement offer. The dispute centers on conflicting language between the signed grant cover sheet and a later invitation letter from Jensen Huang.
The grant and the disagreement
The grant document, dated September 9, 1993 and signed by Huang, awards 25,000 options with a cover sheet stating that all shares vest upon the expiration of one year from the grant date, 25 percent at three months, then quarterly. That language points to full vesting by September 9, 1994. An undated invitation letter also signed by Huang describes the same award vesting over four years. The cover sheet adds that any conflict with its attached legal provisions defaults to those provisions, which Gullichsen did not publish, and that the cover sheet supersedes prior written agreements.
The math and the money
Nvidia's then-CFO Marcel Gani sent a letter on April 16, 1996 ending Gullichsen's relationship with the company and the advisory board. It listed 15,625 vested options, 62.5 percent of the grant, or ten of sixteen quarters, matching a four-year quarterly schedule running from the grant date to the letter date. The exercise price was $0.05 per share with a 90-day window that closed around July 15, 1996. Gullichsen argues the remaining 9,375 shares should have vested under the one-year terms. After a combined 480-fold increase from stock splits, those shares would equal 4.5 million shares valued at roughly $1.01 billion at the September 25 close of $225.07.
The legal reality
Gullichsen retained counsel on a contingency basis and spent about a year exchanging letters with Nvidia's in-house and outside lawyers. The two sides met to discuss a settlement at what he described as a far smaller number. Nvidia declined. Gullichsen and his lawyers concluded that the statute of limitations and the three-decade lapse since the exercise window expired made a court victory unlikely. Nvidia has not issued a public response.
What happens next
The claim rests on interpreting a cover sheet that references missing attachments. Without those provisions, a court would weigh the one-year vesting language against the four-year invitation letter and the CFO's 1996 vesting count. Gullichsen's own settlement calculus included the likelihood he would have sold the shares long before the split-driven appreciation. For now, the blog post stands as the only public record of a dispute that Nvidia has chosen not to address.