Owed a billion dollars in Nvidia stock
Owed a billion dollars in Nvidia stock
本应属于我的十亿美元英伟达股票
Early Days 早期岁月
It is not widely known, but I was invited to join the Technical Advisory Board of NVIDIA in 1993 by Jensen (at that time, sans leather jacket). In September 1993, I was granted 25,000 options, “in a series of quarterly installments so that all shares shall vest upon the expiration of one year from Grant Date.” This invitation followed a meeting I had with Jensen, Curtis Priem, and Chris Malachowsky on my houseboat, the SS Vallejo, in Sausalito. 鲜为人知的是，1993年我受黄仁勋（当时他还没穿皮夹克）之邀，加入了英伟达（NVIDIA）的技术顾问委员会。1993年9月，我获得了25,000份股票期权，“分季度授予，所有股份在授予日期起一年后全部归属”。在此之前，我曾与黄仁勋、Curtis Priem和Chris Malachowsky在索萨利托我那艘名为“SS Vallejo”的船屋上开过一次会。
I’d done a fair bit of work with Curtis circa 1990, when he was at Sun Microsystems, architect of the SPARCstation GX chip. Sun was one of the companies supporting my early virtual reality company, Sense8 Corporation. The Sun GX was blazingly fast at blitting polygons - some 50k/second - and we’d ported Sense8’s VR rendering to it. Subsequently, I implemented bilinear texture mapping using the Intel i750 DVI chip. But what caught Curtis’s attention in 1993, and caused him to bring the other NVIDIA founders to visit me for a demo, was my fast implementation of biquadratic texture mapping. Details are in US5796426A and subsequent patents. 1990年前后，我曾与当时在Sun Microsystems担任SPARCstation GX芯片架构师的Curtis有过不少合作。Sun是支持我早期虚拟现实公司Sense8 Corporation的企业之一。Sun GX在多边形渲染方面速度极快——每秒约5万个——我们将Sense8的VR渲染引擎移植到了该平台上。随后，我利用Intel i750 DVI芯片实现了双线性纹理映射。但真正引起Curtis注意并促使他带着其他英伟达创始人来找我演示的，是我对双二次纹理映射的高效实现。相关细节记录在US5796426A及后续专利中。
Curtis understood the potential of non-linear texture mapping to differentiate NVIDIA’s first product, the NV1, from the competition. I worked for while, quite casually, with Curtis on porting my biquadratic texture mapping to their hardware, and wrote the code for an Intel-sponsored VR string-quartet demo on prototype NVIDIA hardware - actually a GX card in a PCI adapter - shown at the Guggenheim SoHo in 1993. Curtis明白非线性纹理映射的潜力，这能让英伟达的首款产品NV1在竞争中脱颖而出。我曾与Curtis断断续续地合作了一段时间，将我的双二次纹理映射移植到他们的硬件上，并为英特尔赞助的VR弦乐四重奏演示编写了代码。该演示运行在英伟达的原型硬件上（实际上是一块装在PCI适配器里的GX卡），并于1993年在苏荷区的古根海姆博物馆展出。
When the NV1 finally shipped in 1995, Microsoft decided, for reasons of their own, not to support quadratic texture mapping, or even quads, in their just-released DirectX toolkit - triangles only. This had a devastating effect on NVIDIA’s finances and prospects, and the company laid off a large percentage of its staff. Then, in April 1996 - by which time I’d expatriated to the Kingdom of Tonga and was working on various internet startup schemes - NVIDIA’s CFO wrote me a letter stating that 15,625 shares of my stock options had vested, and that I was required to exercise them. I did, and then forgot all about it. 1995年NV1最终发布时，微软出于自身原因，决定在其刚发布的DirectX工具包中不支持二次纹理映射，甚至不支持四边形，只支持三角形。这对英伟达的财务和前景造成了毁灭性打击，公司裁掉了很大一部分员工。随后在1996年4月——当时我已经移居汤加王国，正忙于各种互联网创业计划——英伟达的首席财务官给我写了一封信，称我的15,625份股票期权已经归属，并要求我行权。我照做了，然后就把这事忘得一干二净。
30 Years Later 30年后
Fast-forward to 2024. I’m sitting with a day-trader friend, surrounded by screens all blaring news about NVIDIA, the Most Important Company on Earth. So I went home and dug through my folder of old documents. Imagine my surprise: according to the duly signed option agreement, my options were meant to vest over four quarters, not four years, as both NVIDIA’s CFO and their outside counsel, Cooley, had asserted back in 1996. 时间快进到2024年。我和一位日内交易员朋友坐在一起，周围的屏幕上都在播放关于英伟达的新闻——这家地球上最重要的公司。于是我回家翻找旧文件。令我惊讶的是：根据那份正式签署的期权协议，我的期权本应在四个季度内归属，而不是像英伟达首席财务官及其外部法律顾问Cooley在1996年所声称的那样需要四年。
The math is clear: 15,625 of 25,000 shares is 62.5%, exactly what you’d expect after ten quarters of a four-year vesting schedule. On the one-year schedule the agreement actually specified, all 25,000 shares should have vested well before that letter was even written. With the stock’s many splits - a cumulative 480x to date - my missing 9,375 shares are now 4,500,000 shares. 算术很清楚：25,000股中的15,625股是62.5%，这正是四年归属期经过十个季度后的预期结果。而按照协议实际规定的“一年归属期”，所有25,000股本应在那封信发出之前就已全部归属。随着英伟达股票多次拆股——迄今累计拆分了480倍——我那缺失的9,375股现在变成了4,500,000股。
A handsome enough pile that I engaged formidable attorneys Allan Steyer of Steyer Lowenthal, and Chris Burke of Korein Tillery, to explore the issue. Consummate advocates, letterheads with substantial gravitas. After about a year of my attorneys and NVIDIA’s in-house and outside counsel sending letters back and forth citing case law and blustering, I mentioned to my attorneys that, as I was growing elderly and there seemed to be no end to this exchange of letters, perhaps they could meet and settle. 这笔财富相当可观，以至于我聘请了Steyer Lowenthal律师事务所的Allan Steyer和Korein Tillery律师事务所的Chris Burke这两位强大的律师来探讨这个问题。他们是顶尖的辩护人，信笺抬头都透着威严。在我的律师与英伟达的内部及外部法律顾问就案例法和虚张声势的信件往来了一年左右后，我告诉律师，随着我年事渐高，而这种信件往来似乎永无止境，或许他们可以见面达成和解。
NVIDIA did not dispute the authenticity of the option agreement, only that my claims were long since time-barred. The meeting was held with great professionalism, but Cooley’s answer was, in essence, “so sue us.” After much soul-searching, deliberation, and gnashing of teeth, my attorneys and I concluded that the statute of limitations was against us. Because of the thirty-odd years that had passed while I “sat on my rights,” it seemed unlikely we’d make it past a motion to dismiss. 英伟达并没有质疑期权协议的真实性，只是坚称我的诉求早已过了诉讼时效。会议进行得非常专业，但Cooley的回答本质上就是：“有本事就去告我们。”经过深思熟虑、反复权衡和痛苦挣扎，我和律师得出结论：诉讼时效对我们不利。由于我“坐视权利”长达三十多年，我们似乎很难通过法院的驳回动议。
Lessons? 教训？
I offer this in the spirit of a cautionary tale. I’m sure there are lessons here for those with a more phlegmatic personality than mine. Here in the land of the free, it turns out a company only has to honor its contractual obligations for a little while. Has anyone else discovered a similar vesting surprise, decades later? And how was it resolved? I remain sanguine, and amused. As the Emperor Septimius Severus quipped: “Omnia fui, nihil expedit.” 我写下这些是作为一种警示。我相信对于那些性格比我更冷静的人来说，这里面一定有值得借鉴的教训。在这个“自由之地”，事实证明一家公司只需要履行其合同义务一小段时间就够了。还有其他人像我一样在几十年后发现了类似的归属意外吗？你们是如何解决的？我依然保持乐观，并觉得很有趣。正如塞普蒂米乌斯·塞维鲁皇帝所调侃的那样：“我经历了一切，但一切都无济于事。”
Eric Gullichsen, September 2026 Eric Gullichsen，2026年9月