Leaving xAI? Plan your 90-day ISO window
Calculator · free · no signup · pre-IPOxAI 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 May 15, 2026
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: $267,183 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.
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.
| 1 | 10,000 | |||
| 2 | 0 | |||
| 3 | 0 |
Federal AMT credit
Earned
$213,838
Recovered
$29,764
Remaining
$184,074
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 xAI
xAI is a privately held AI company, incorporated in Nevada and headquartered in Palo Alto, CA.
Last reported secondary-market price: $78.28 per share (as of 2026-05-15). Your own 409A may differ.
Merged with SpaceX entity.
Equity grants at xAI typically include incentive stock options (ISOs) and non-qualified stock options (NSOs).
X.AI LLC, doing business as xAI, is a subsidiary of the American spaceflight company SpaceX working in the areas of artificial intelligence (AI) and social media.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Elon Musk founded xAI in March 2023 with a team of eleven researchers drawn from DeepMind, OpenAI, and Google. The company builds Grok, a conversational AI chatbot integrated into X (formerly Twitter), and operates Colossus, a Memphis-based supercluster that scaled to 555,000 NVIDIA GPUs by early 2026. Grok 3, released in February 2025, scored 93.3% on the AIME 2025 mathematics benchmark. xAI raised $6 billion in a May 2024 Series B, another $6 billion in December 2024, and a $20 billion Series E in January 2026, reaching a $230 billion valuation.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org · techcrunch.com
Equity comp at xAI
- In February 2026, SpaceX acquired xAI in an all-stock deal. Each xAI share converted into 0.1433 SpaceX shares, converting all xAI equity (vested options, unvested grants, RSUs) into SpaceX equity at the same ratio. For equity planning, employees who held xAI grants now hold SpaceX grants. Standard tax treatment (ISO for incentive stock options, NSO for non-qualified, or ordinary income on RSU vest) carried forward through the conversion with terms adjusted proportionally. Liquidity now depends on SpaceX's twice-yearly tender offer (a company-organized window where employees can sell vested shares to outside buyers) calendar and SpaceX's planned IPO, not any independent xAI path.
Sources: cnbc.com · techcrunch.com
Researched 2026-05-07.
OptionsAhoy is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by xAI.
If you are leaving xAI 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 xAI with 5,000 vested ISOs at a $23.48 strike, with the last reported price at $78.28, exercising all of them inside the 90-day window puts a $274,000 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 $76,720 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 xAI tools → · Use the generic Post-Termination ISO Exercise Calculator for any company.
xAI equity questions
- I left xAI. 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 xAI'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 xAI grant ISOs, NSOs, or RSUs?
- Equity compensation at xAI 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 xAI 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 xAI 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 xAI equity alongside hedging, vesting, and de-concentration, across bullish, neutral, and bearish market scenarios. Free during beta.