Leaving Databricks? Plan your 90-day ISO window

Calculator · free · no signup · pre-IPO

Databricks is pre-IPO. Left with vested ISOs? Model the 90-day exercise-or-forfeit decision and its AMT cost at any valuation: current 409A or an expected exit price.

Beta · invite-only · AlphaLatitude Inc. · Free Tools

Your grant

Seeded from secondary-market data, as of Jun 11, 2026

3 yrs
10%
20%
5.0%

Tax inputs

Grant timeline

Recommended exercise quantity

Exercise all 10,000

With 10%/yr expected growth over the 3-yr hold, every share's expected after-tax gain exceeds its marginal AMT cost. Net value: $805,285 at horizon.

Net after-tax value vs. shares exercised

Each point is the expected after-tax NPV at your hold horizon if you exercise that many shares now and let the rest expire.

$0$201K$403K$604K$805K02,5005,0007,50010,000
Recommended (10,000)Full exercise (10,000)

Year-by-year tax breakdown

You pay the higher of Regular tax and Tentative AMT per jurisdiction, then subtract Credit recovered. The result is Net tax. Hover any number for the bracket-by-bracket breakdown.

110,000
20
30

Federal AMT credit

Earned

$672,366

Recovered

$29,764

Remaining

$642,602

The AMT credit only recovers in years where regular tax exceeds AMT — typically a year with no ISO exercise. It carries forward indefinitely (Form 8801) and applies in any future tax year where regular tax exceeds AMT.

Estimates only. Excludes disqualifying dispositions, NSOs, multi-state moves, and AMT preferences other than ISO bargain elements. Long-term capital gains tax assumes a qualifying disposition (ISO held ≥1 yr from exercise and ≥2 yr from grant); state LTCG follows ordinary brackets except where the state grants preferential treatment (HI, ND, SC, WI, AR, NM) or has a dedicated LTCG-only tax (WA). Assumes you are within the $100K ISO limit (any portion of an annual ISO grant whose FMV at grant exceeds $100K is treated as NSO from the start, §422(d)). State AMT figures are 2025 (next-year values published in late 2026). Not financial advice.

QSBS note. If your shares qualify (typically pre-IPO C-corp grants held 5+ years), a federal rule lets you exclude up to $10M of gain on a future sale from federal tax. That single rule shifts exercise-timing math more than AMT does. (This is §1202 “qualified small-business stock”.) Modeled in beta, not here.

You solved the exercise window. The beta plans what comes after it: the new shares, your remaining equity, hedges, and taxes in one multi-year 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 2026-06-11). 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.

If you are leaving Databricks with vested incentive stock options (ISOs), most stock plans give you 90 days from departure to exercise or forfeit them. The calculator works at any valuation: enter your strike and the current 409A fair market value (FMV) or an expected exit price. It computes your window deadline, the alternative minimum tax (AMT) cost of exercising in full, and the partial-exercise share count that maximizes expected after-tax value.

Example: leaving Databricks with 5,000 vested ISOs at a $72.61 strike, with the last reported price at $242.04, exercising all of them inside the 90-day window puts a $847,150 bargain element into one tax year. Above the 2026 federal AMT exemption ($88,100 single, $137,000 married joint), the 28% AMT rate adds roughly $237,202 on top of regular tax before any state AMT (CA, CO, CT, MN). Exercising fewer shares lowers that bill at the cost of forfeiting the rest; the calculator above finds the count that maximizes expected after-tax value for your exact figures.

All Databricks tools → · Use the generic Post-Termination ISO Exercise Calculator for any company.

Databricks equity questions

I left Databricks. How long do I have to exercise my ISOs?
Most stock plans give you 90 days from your departure date to exercise vested incentive stock options (ISOs); unexercised options are forfeited when the window closes. Tax law is slightly wider: ISO treatment requires you to have been an employee within 3 months of exercise (Internal Revenue Code Section 422(a)(2)), so options exercised under an employer-extended window are taxed as non-qualified stock options (NSOs). Check your grant agreement for Databricks's exact terms. The calculator above computes your deadline from your departure date, the alternative minimum tax (AMT) cost of exercising, and the share count that maximizes after-tax value.
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.
Find another companyData peers

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.

Request beta access