A man who advised Nvidia back in 1993 says he is owed about a billion dollars in stock — and the company’s lawyers told him to sue them.
The story comes from Eric Gullichsen, who says he was invited to join Nvidia’s Technical Advisory Board in 1993. Gullichsen was granted 25,000 stock options, with all shares supposed to vest within a year of the grant date.
The 1993 Meeting on the SS Vallejo
Gullichsen first met Jensen, Curtis Priem, and Chris Malachowsky on his houseboat, the SS Vallejo, in Sausalito. He had worked with Priem at Sun Microsystems around 1990, when Priem was architect of the SPARCstation GX chip.
Sun supported Gullichsen’s early virtual reality company, Sense8 Corporation. Gullichsen’s fast implementation of biquadratic texture mapping drew Priem’s attention in 1993, leading to a demo on Gullichsen’s hardware. The details appear in US5796426A and subsequent patents.
He also ported Sense8’s VR rendering to the Sun GX and implemented bilinear texture mapping using the Intel i750 DVI chip. His work with Nvidia included an Intel-sponsored VR string-quartet demo shown at the Guggenheim SoHo in 1993.
What Went Wrong With the NV1
When Nvidia’s NV1 shipped in 1995, Microsoft decided not to support quadratic texture mapping in its new DirectX toolkit. The company laid off a large share of its staff, and Nvidia’s finances suffered.
In April 1996, Gullichsen had expatriated to Tonga and was working on internet startup schemes. Nvidia’s CFO wrote him a letter saying 15,625 shares had vested and he needed to exercise them. Gullichsen did, and then forgot about it.
The Math From 2024
Fast-forward to 2024, when Gullichsen sat with a day-trader friend surrounded by screens blaring news about Nvidia. He went home and dug through old documents.
The option agreement specified a one-year vesting schedule, not four years as both Nvidia’s CFO and its outside counsel, Cooley, had claimed in 1996. Gullichsen’s 15,625 vested shares represent 62.5% of the total, exactly what you would expect after ten quarters of a four-year schedule.
On the one-year schedule the agreement actually specified, all 25,000 shares should have vested well before that letter was written. With Nvidia’s many stock splits, the missing 9,375 shares became 4,500,000 shares.
Gullichsen hired formidable attorneys Allan Steyer of Steyer Lowenthal and Chris Burke of Korein Tillery to explore the issue. The lawyers exchanged letters for about a year, citing case law and blustering.
Nvidia’s Response Was a Referral
Nvidia did not dispute the authenticity of the option agreement. Instead, its counsel said Gullichsen’s claims were long since time-barred.
A meeting was held with great professionalism, but Cooley’s answer was, in essence, “so sue us.” Gullichsen and his attorneys concluded the statute of limitations was against them. After sitting on his rights for thirty-odd years, they doubted they could survive a motion to dismiss.
Gullichsen remains sanguine and amused. He quotes the Emperor Septimius Severus: “Omnia fui, nihil expedit,” meaning “I have done everything, nothing avails.”
Key Facts
- Gullichsen was granted 25,000 options in September 1993
- All shares were supposed to vest within a year of the grant date
- In 1996, Nvidia’s CFO said 15,625 shares had vested
- Nvidia’s stock has split cumulatively 480x to date
- The missing 9,375 shares are now 4,500,000 shares
- Nvidia’s outside counsel is Cooley
- Gullichsen’s attorneys are Allan Steyer of Steyer Lowenthal and Chris Burke of Korein Tillery
Gullichsen offers this in the spirit of a cautionary tale. He notes that in the land of the free, a company only has to honor its contractual obligations for a little while.
Whether anyone else has found a similar vesting surprise decades later, and how it was resolved, remains unknown.
Source material: “Owed a billion dollars in Nvidia stock,” colo.to.
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