Databricks RSU sell-vs-hold
Calculator · free · no signup · pre-IPODatabricks is pre-IPO. After IPO, RSUs vest as ordinary income. Should you sell at vest or hold through the 12-month LTCG cliff?
Beta · invite-only · AlphaLatitude Inc. · Free Tools
Your vest
Seeded from secondary-market data, as of Jun 16, 2026
Tax inputs
Hold strategy
Best after-tax payout — at year 1 yr
$139,617
Sell + invest wins by $98,287 over Hold 1 yr.
Estimates only. Not financial advice.
Heads-up: under-withholding. Your employer withholds federal tax at the IRS supplemental rate (22.0% on this vest, ≈ $53,249). Your marginal federal rate on this vest is 34.2%, owing $82,885. Expect to settle the $29,636 gap at tax time.
The hidden purchase
Tax was paid at vest either way. Holding is mathematically equivalent to taking $130,251 in after-tax cash and buying $130,251 of this stock today.
Most diversification frameworks would advise against a purchase that size in a single name; the right answer depends on your conviction in this stock. Holding past one year converts the gain to LTCG.
Sell + invest
Best payout| Vest value (shares × price) | $242,040 |
| Federal | |
| State | |
| Medicare | −$3,510 |
| Additional Medicare | −$2,178 |
| Market gain over 1 yr at 10.0% | $13,025 |
| Cap-gain tax on diversified gain — LTCG (federal + state + NIIT) | −$3,660 |
| Net at year 1 yr | $139,617 |
Sell every share at vest; invest the after-tax cash at the market return for 1 yr, then liquidate. Diversified — no single-stock concentration risk.
Hold 1 yr
| Vest value (shares × price) | $242,040 |
| Vest tax (federal + state + FICA) | |
| Net at year 1 yr | $41,329 |
Sold 462 shares to cover vest tax (net-settled); kept 538 shares 1 yr to qualify for long-term capital gains.
Social Security + Medicare are payroll taxes (collectively called FICA) — they apply because you're still employed at vest.
Both columns are stated in year-1 yr dollars. The sell side compounds at the market return; the hold side compounds at your single-stock expected return after a 20% volatility drag.
Estimates only. Assumes net-settled (sell-to-cover) vesting; double-trigger and pre-IPO RSUs are out of scope. Excludes multi-state moves, AMT interactions on other equity, and 83(b) elections. Not financial advice.
You evaluated one RSU vest. The beta plans every vest of every grant across years, with concentration and AMT in the loop.
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.
Most pre-IPO companies grant ISOs or NSOs rather than RSUs. If you hold Databricks RSUs, this calculator works at any valuation.
Example: 500 Databricks RSUs vesting at $242.04 per share is $121,020 of ordinary income on vest day. After roughly 32% combined federal + state + FICA (~$38,726), the post-tax share value is ~$82,294. Holding 12 months for long-term capital-gains treatment then only matters for the price change between vest and sale; the ordinary income at vest is already locked in. The calculator runs both paths through the same after-tax math.
All Databricks tools → · Use the generic RSU Sell-vs-Hold Calculator for any company.
Databricks equity questions
- Should I sell or hold my Databricks RSUs at vest?
- Databricks restricted stock units (RSUs) are taxed as ordinary income on their value at vest whether or not you sell. The only open decision is what to do with the shares afterward: sell at vest and reinvest, or hold past twelve months for long-term capital-gains treatment on any further gain. The calculator above runs both paths through the same after-tax math so you can compare them directly.
- 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.