Plan your Motive NSO exercise
Calculator · free · no signup · pre-IPOMotive 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 9, 2026
Tax inputs
Hold strategy
Best after-tax payout — at year 1
$49,509
Hold 1 yr wins by $36,824 over Sell + invest.
Estimates only. Not financial advice.
Sell + invest
| Bargain element (sale − strike) | $20,750 |
| Federal | |
| State | |
| Medicare | −$301 |
| Additional Medicare | −$187 |
| Market gain over 1 yr at 10.0% | $1,183 |
| LTCG on diversified gain (fed + state + NIIT) | −$333 |
| Net at year 1 | $12,686 |
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
Best payout| Sale proceeds (year 1) | |
| LTCG tax (federal + state + NIIT) | −$14,724 |
| Net at year 1 | $49,509 |
Sold 4,164 shares at exercise to cover strike + tax; 836 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 Motive
Motive is a privately held Vertical SaaS company, incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Francisco, CA.
Last reported secondary-market price: $14.15 per share (as of 2026-06-09). Your own 409A may differ.
Fleet mgmt.
Equity grants at Motive typically include incentive stock options (ISOs) and non-qualified stock options (NSOs).
Motive Technologies, Inc. is a technology company that creates software used by truck companies. Its main product is Hours of Service monitoring using GPS tracking and dashcams.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Shoaib Makani, Ryan Johns, and Obaid Khan founded Motive, then called KeepTruckin, in 2013 to bring digital compliance and safety tools to commercial trucking. The platform has since expanded into fleet management software covering driver safety scores, real-time GPS, fuel efficiency, and maintenance tracking across physical operations industries. The company rebranded as Motive in 2022. It raised $150 million in its most recent round while generating nearly $500 million in annualized recurring revenue and reaching cash-flow positive status by late 2024. Motive filed an S-1 for a NYSE IPO in December 2025.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org · news.alphastreet.com
Equity comp at Motive
- Motive issued RSUs under its 2013 Plan subject to both a time-based service condition and a liquidity event condition. The liquidity event trigger (the second condition, requiring either a qualified IPO or a change of control before shares settle) is satisfied by whichever occurs first. RSUs outstanding at the December 2025 S-1 filing were set to settle upon effectiveness of the registration statement, meaning employees who separated before the IPO would forfeit time-vested RSUs if the event trigger had not yet been satisfied.
Sources: sec.gov · gomotive.com
Researched 2026-05-10.
OptionsAhoy is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Motive.
Motive 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 Motive's last reported price of $14.15, exercising 5,000 NSOs with a $4.25 strike creates a $49,500 bargain element, taxed as ordinary income on the day you exercise. Combined federal + state + FICA on that bargain typically lands between $13,365 and $22,275 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 Motive tools → · Use the generic NSO Exercise Calculator for any company.
Motive equity questions
- How is a Motive 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 Motive grant and compares selling the shares now against holding past the one-year mark for long-term capital-gains treatment.
- Does Motive grant ISOs, NSOs, or RSUs?
- Equity compensation at Motive 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 Motive 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 Motive 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 Motive equity alongside hedging, vesting, and de-concentration, across bullish, neutral, and bearish market scenarios. Free during beta.