Plan your Adept NSO exercise
Calculator · free · no signup · pre-IPOAdept is pre-IPO. Plan your NSO exercise tax (federal, state, FICA) at any expected valuation.
Beta · invite-only · AlphaLatitude Inc. · Free Tools
Your grant
Tax inputs
Hold strategy
Best after-tax payout — at year 1
$199,080
Sell + invest wins by $20,783 over Hold 1 yr.
Estimates only. Not financial advice.
Sell + invest
Best payout| Bargain element (sale − strike) | $350,000 |
| Federal | |
| State | |
| Medicare | −$5,075 |
| Additional Medicare | −$3,150 |
| Market gain over 1 yr at 10.0% | $18,573 |
| LTCG on diversified gain (fed + state + NIIT) | −$5,219 |
| Net at year 1 | $199,080 |
Sell every share immediately; invest the after-tax cash at the market return for 1 yr, then liquidate. Diversified — no single-stock concentration risk.
Exercise + hold 1 yr
| Sale proceeds (year 1) | |
| LTCG tax (federal + state + NIIT) | $0 |
| Net at year 1 | $178,297 |
Sold 2,678 shares at exercise to cover strike + tax; 2,322 shares held 1 yr for LTCG.
Social Security + Medicare are payroll taxes (collectively called FICA) — they apply because you're exercising as a current employee.
Both columns are stated in year-1 dollars: sell-now proceeds compound at the market return and pay LTCG on the gain at year 1; any cash paid out of pocket on the hold side carries the same opportunity cost.
Net at year N — by hold period
Estimates only. Excludes AMT (NSOs do not trigger AMT), state-AMT, multi-state moves, and disqualifying-disposition edge cases. Not financial advice.
You calculated one NSO decision. The beta plans NSOs alongside RSUs and ISOs in a single multi-year tax plan.
Request beta access →About Adept
Adept is a privately held AI company, incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Francisco, CA.
Action models.
Equity grants at Adept typically include incentive stock options (ISOs) and non-qualified stock options (NSOs).
Adept built action models designed to operate software interfaces on behalf of users. It was an early, explicit bet on agentic AI. David Luan, a former OpenAI VP of Engineering, co-founded the company in 2022 alongside Ashish Vaswani and Niki Parmar, two of the original eight authors of the 2017 Transformer paper that introduced the attention mechanism. Adept raised $415 million in total, including a $350 million Series B in March 2023 from General Catalyst, Spark Capital, and others. In June 2024, Amazon hired most of the founding team, returning roughly the invested capital to shareholders and ending Adept as an independent entity.
Sources: semafor.com
Equity comp at Adept
- In June 2024, Amazon hired most of Adept's team (including founders David Luan, Ashish Vaswani, and Niki Parmar) and licensed Adept's technology in a deal structured similarly to the Microsoft/Inflection acquihire. Adept continued as an independent company but with reduced headcount and leadership. Employees who joined before the acquihire held equity in an entity that saw its core team depart; remaining equity value depends on the standalone company's post-deal performance.
Researched 2026-05-07.
OptionsAhoy is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Adept.
Adept NSO exercise creates ordinary income on the bargain element (federal, state, and FICA) at the price on the day you exercise. The calculator works at any valuation, so you can model your exercise cost at the current 409A FMV, an expected IPO price, or post-IPO scenarios.
All Adept tools → · Use the generic NSO Exercise Calculator for any company.
Adept equity questions
- How is a Adept NSO exercise taxed?
- Exercising a non-qualified stock option (NSO) creates ordinary income on the bargain element (the price on the day you exercise minus your strike), subject to federal income tax, state income tax, and FICA. The calculator above computes that tax for your Adept grant and compares selling the shares now against holding past the one-year mark for long-term capital-gains treatment.
- Does Adept grant ISOs, NSOs, or RSUs?
- Equity compensation at Adept typically takes the form of incentive stock options (ISOs) and non-qualified stock options (NSOs). Incentive stock options can trigger the alternative minimum tax (AMT) when you exercise.
- Are Adept shares eligible for QSBS?
- They might be. Qualified small business stock (QSBS) under Internal Revenue Code Section 1202 can exclude federal tax on much of the gain when shares were acquired at original issuance from a C-corporation while its gross assets were under $50 million, and held at least five years. Whether your Adept shares qualify turns on when you acquired them and the company's asset size at that time.
One piece of the puzzle.
OptionsAhoy plans your Adept equity alongside hedging, vesting, and de-concentration, across bullish, neutral, and bearish market scenarios. Free during beta.