Plan your Plaid NSO exercise
Calculator · free · no signup · pre-IPOPlaid 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
$408,219
Sell + invest wins by $224,453 over Hold 1 yr.
Estimates only. Not financial advice.
Sell + invest
Best payout| Bargain element (sale − strike) | $745,800 |
| Federal | |
| State | |
| Medicare | −$10,814 |
| Additional Medicare | −$6,712 |
| Market gain over 1 yr at 10.0% | $38,084 |
| LTCG on diversified gain (fed + state + NIIT) | −$10,702 |
| Net at year 1 | $408,219 |
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 | $183,767 |
Sold 2,607 shares at exercise to cover strike + tax; 2,393 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 Plaid
Plaid is a privately held Fintech company, incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Francisco, CA.
Last reported secondary-market price: $159.16 per share (as of 2026-06-09). Your own 409A may differ.
$8B Feb 2026.
Equity grants at Plaid typically include incentive stock options (ISOs) and non-qualified stock options (NSOs).
Plaid Inc. is an American financial services company based in San Francisco, California. The company builds a data transfer network that powers fintech and digital finance products.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Zach Perret and William Hockey founded Plaid in 2012 to connect consumer bank accounts to financial apps through a single API. Developers use Plaid to verify account ownership, check balances, and read transaction history, the underlying plumbing for apps like Venmo, Robinhood, and thousands of others. After a failed $5.3 billion acquisition by Visa collapsed in 2021, Plaid raised $575 million in April 2025 at a $6.1 billion valuation, led by Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, and BlackRock. A February 2026 employee share sale pushed its implied valuation to $8 billion.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org · fintechmagazine.com
Equity comp at Plaid
- Plaid's RSUs carry a time-based vesting schedule plus a liquidity trigger (IPO or acquisition) before shares settle. The company ran employee tender offers in April 2025 at a $6.1 billion valuation (led by Franklin Templeton) and again in February 2026 at an $8 billion valuation. These tenders provided the first meaningful opportunity for early employees to convert vested equity into cash.
- Recent share-sale events (industry term: tender offers):
- Apr 2025: $6.1B implied valuation, led by Franklin Templeton · techcrunch.com
- Feb 2026: $8B implied valuation · wsj.com
Researched 2026-05-07.
OptionsAhoy is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Plaid.
Plaid 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 Plaid's last reported price of $159.16, exercising 5,000 NSOs with a $47.75 strike creates a $557,050 bargain element, taxed as ordinary income on the day you exercise. Combined federal + state + FICA on that bargain typically lands between $150,404 and $250,673 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 Plaid tools → · Use the generic NSO Exercise Calculator for any company.
Plaid equity questions
- How is a Plaid 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 Plaid grant and compares selling the shares now against holding past the one-year mark for long-term capital-gains treatment.
- Does Plaid grant ISOs, NSOs, or RSUs?
- Equity compensation at Plaid 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 Plaid 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 Plaid 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 Plaid equity alongside hedging, vesting, and de-concentration, across bullish, neutral, and bearish market scenarios. Free during beta.