Plan your Databricks NSO exercise
Calculator · free · no signup · pre-IPODatabricks is pre-IPO. Plan your NSO exercise tax (federal, state, FICA) at any expected valuation.
Beta · invite-only · AlphaLatitude Inc. · Free Tools
Your grant
Seeded from secondary-market data, as of Jun 16, 2026
Tax inputs
Hold strategy
Best after-tax payout — at year 1
$619,127
Sell + invest wins by $435,853 over Hold 1 yr.
Estimates only. Not financial advice.
Sell + invest
Best payout| Bargain element (sale − strike) | $1,160,200 |
| Federal | |
| State | |
| Medicare | −$16,823 |
| Additional Medicare | −$10,442 |
| Market gain over 1 yr at 10.0% | $57,760 |
| LTCG on diversified gain (fed + state + NIIT) | −$16,230 |
| Net at year 1 | $619,127 |
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 | $183,273 |
Sold 2,614 shares at exercise to cover strike + tax; 2,386 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 Databricks
Databricks is a privately held Data company, incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Francisco, CA.
Last reported secondary-market price: $242.04 per share (as of 2026-06-16). Your own 409A may differ.
$134B Feb 2026.
Equity grants at Databricks typically include incentive stock options (ISOs), non-qualified stock options (NSOs), and restricted stock units (RSUs).
Databricks, Inc. is an American software company based in San Francisco. It was founded in 2013 by the original creators of Apache Spark at the University of California, Berkeley. It offers a cloud-based platform for data analytics and artificial intelligence. It operates natively across Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. The platform includes an open data marketplace built on the Delta Sharing protocol, and functions as a managed AI infrastructure provider by providing proprietary foundation models—including those from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google Gemini—directly within its secure perimeter.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Born inside UC Berkeley's AMPLab in 2013, Databricks commercialized Apache Spark and grew into a unified data and AI lakehouse platform, anchored by Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, and the Mosaic AI stack absorbed via the $1.3B MosaicML deal in June 2023. Co-founders Ali Ghodsi (CEO), Matei Zaharia, Reynold Xin, Patrick Wendell, Andy Konwinski, Ion Stoica, and Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji run the San Francisco company. The Tabular acquisition in June 2024 folded Apache Iceberg expertise into the catalog layer. A $10B Series J closed at a $62B valuation in December 2024, followed by a Series K above $100B in 2025, with an IPO widely anticipated for 2026.
Sources: databricks.com · databricks.com
Equity comp at Databricks
- RSUs use double-trigger vesting. Two things must both happen before the shares are yours: (1) the normal time-based vesting completes, and (2) the company has a liquidity event (an IPO or an acquisition). Until both happen, you do not yet own the shares and you do not owe tax on them.
- Recent share-sale events (industry term: tender offers):
- Feb 2026: $134B implied valuation, led by Thrive Capital · databricks.com
Researched 2026-05-06.
OptionsAhoy is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Databricks.
Databricks 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.
Example: at Databricks's last reported price of $242.04, exercising 5,000 NSOs with a $72.61 strike creates a $847,150 bargain element, taxed as ordinary income on the day you exercise. Combined federal + state + FICA on that bargain typically lands between $228,731 and $381,218 depending on your bracket and state. The calculator above computes the exact figure for your situation and compares selling now vs. holding through the long-term capital-gains threshold.
All Databricks tools → · Use the generic NSO Exercise Calculator for any company.
Databricks equity questions
- How is a Databricks 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 Databricks grant and compares selling the shares now against holding past the one-year mark for long-term capital-gains treatment.
- Does Databricks grant ISOs, NSOs, or RSUs?
- Equity compensation at Databricks typically takes the form of incentive stock options (ISOs), non-qualified stock options (NSOs), and restricted stock units (RSUs). Incentive stock options can trigger the alternative minimum tax (AMT) when you exercise. Restricted stock units are taxed as ordinary income when they vest.
- Do Databricks RSUs use double-trigger vesting?
- Yes. Databricks restricted stock units (RSUs) vest only when two things both happen: the time-based schedule completes, and the company has a liquidity event such as an initial public offering (IPO) or an acquisition. Until both occur you do not own the shares and owe no tax on them.
- Are Databricks 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 Databricks 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 Databricks equity alongside hedging, vesting, and de-concentration, across bullish, neutral, and bearish market scenarios. Free during beta.