Eric Gullichsen, founder of VR company Sense8, says Nvidia undercounted the stock options he received when he served as the chipmaker’s first technical advisor in 1993. Based on the documents he published, he believes Nvidia shorted him by 9,375 shares. After the company’s later stock splits, that difference would equal 4.5 million shares, worth about $1.03 billion at Nvidia’s Sept. 28 closing price of $228.86.
He said he spent more than a year pursuing the matter with lawyers, but Nvidia’s side argued that any claim was barred by the statute of limitations. Gullichsen said the company did not deny the authenticity of the underlying documents, and he has now dropped the idea of filing suit.
A 1993 option grant is at the center of the dispute
In a post published in September on his personal website, Gullichsen said Nvidia co-founders Jensen Huang, Curtis Priem and Chris Malachowsky visited his houseboat in 1993 to see a technology demo. He was later invited to join Nvidia’s technical advisory board. An invitation letter he shared, signed by Huang, described him as the first member of that board.
Gullichsen said he helped port his quadrilateral texture-mapping technology to NV1, Nvidia’s first product. A contract dated Sept. 9, 1993 stated that he received options for 25,000 shares. The vesting schedule in that grant provided for 25% to vest after three months, with another 25% vesting each quarter after that, making the full grant vested within one year.
Nvidia’s early business then ran into trouble. Gullichsen wrote that after NV1 launched in 1995, Microsoft’s new DirectX supported triangles rather than NV1’s quadratic texture mapping. He said that hurt Nvidia financially and led to major layoffs.
Nvidia’s 1996 notice counted only 15,625 vested shares
On April 16, 1996, then-chief financial officer Marcel Gani sent Gullichsen a letter terminating his advisory agreement. The letter said only 15,625 shares had vested and gave him 90 days to exercise those options at $0.05 per share. Exercising the full amount would cost $781.25. Gullichsen said he did so at the time and then forgot about the matter.
He said the issue resurfaced only in 2024, when Nvidia was back in the spotlight and he dug out his old paperwork. That was when he noticed the numbers did not line up. In his view, 15,625 shares represent 62.5% of the original 25,000-share grant, which matches 10 quarters under a four-year vesting schedule. But if the one-year vesting language in the grant controlled, all 25,000 shares should have been fully vested well before Nvidia sent the 1996 letter.
That is the basis for his claim that 9,375 shares were omitted.
Six stock splits turned the disputed amount into 4.5 million shares
Gullichsen’s post says Nvidia has completed six stock splits since 2000: 2-for-1 splits in 2000, 2001 and 2006, a 3-for-2 split in 2007, a 4-for-1 split in 2021 and a 10-for-1 split in 2024. Taken together, one old share became 480 shares.
Applying that ratio to the disputed 9,375 shares produces 4.5 million shares today. At Nvidia’s Sept. 28 close of $228.86, Gullichsen calculated the current value at roughly $1.03 billion.
Lawyers exchanged letters for about a year
Gullichsen said he retained Allan Steyer of Steyer Lowenthal and Chris Burke of Korein Tillery to handle the matter. He wrote that lawyers for both sides exchanged correspondence for about a year. During that process, Nvidia’s in-house legal team and outside counsel Cooley did not deny that the option agreement was authentic, according to Gullichsen. Their position, he said, was that the claim came too late.
He later asked his lawyers to meet with Nvidia to discuss a settlement. Gullichsen said Cooley’s response was effectively, 「then sue us」. In a Hacker News comment, he added that his lawyers had taken the matter on a contingency basis. He also said the final settlement number raised in discussions was far below $1 billion, and Nvidia still rejected it.
After reviewing the case with counsel, Gullichsen concluded that the lawsuit would probably not survive a motion to dismiss. He decided not to pursue the matter further.
An inconsistency between the invitation letter and the grant drew attention online
People on Hacker News also pointed to a discrepancy in the documents. The invitation letter referred to vesting over four years, while the stock option grant described a one-year schedule. Nvidia’s 1996 calculation followed the four-year approach, which matches the wording in the invitation letter.
At the end of his post, Gullichsen called the episode a 「cautionary tale」. He said he was not upset by the outcome and also found it funny.