The article states that they exercised their options.

No, it doesn't.

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.

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16 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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donbox an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

So 15,625 were exercised.

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Eric_Gullichsen an hour ago | parent [-]

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.

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cloudbonsai 15 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

What happened to 15,625 shares you did exercise? I guess they are worth over $1.5 billion as of today?

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lazyasciiart an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well, the bad news is that the statute of limitations on that appears to be three years in California.

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schneems an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> replied on them

I think this is a typo.

	▲	30 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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j45 36 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

	▲	binlog 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		They learned about it when they signed the contract. Saying “I forgot about it“ doesn’t reset the statute of limitations.