Concept-of-the-week
ISOs vs NSOs
Two types of stock options. One decision that affects taxes for both you and your employees.
ISOs (Incentive Stock Options) offer tax advantages — no regular income tax at exercise, though exercise can trigger an Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). If employees hold shares for 2+ years from grant and 1+ year from exercise, the entire gain is taxed as long-term capital gains. But ISOs have restrictions: they can only be granted by a corporation on corporate stock, only to employees, with a $100k annual limit per employee.
NSOs (Non-Qualified Stock Options) are simpler. Any business structure can grant them to anyone — employees, contractors, advisors. The trade-off: the spread at exercise is taxed as ordinary income. But your company gets a corresponding tax deduction.
Most startups use both: ISOs for employees (up to limits), NSOs for everyone else.
What we’re watching
Anthropic’s planned employee tender offer
Source: Anthropic.com
Anthropic is planning a tender offer at a $350B valuation — letting current and former employees sell shares while the company raises $20B in fresh funding.
The details aren't finalized yet. Final transaction value will depend on how much stock eligible employees decide to sell, with capital being lined up from investors.
This follows a pattern. OpenAI ran a $6.6B secondary sale at $500B in October 2025. SpaceX is targeting an $800B valuation for its next tender. Stripe has done multiple rounds — most recently at $91.5B in February 2025.
The trend: the most valuable private companies are staying private longer, but offering employees periodic liquidity through structured secondary sales. Employees no longer have to wait for an IPO to turn equity into cash.
Source: Bloomberg
This week’s highlights
Elon Musk’s SpaceX combines with xAI at $1.25T valuation (Source)
Waymo raises $16B to scale robotaxi fleet internationally (Source)
GrubMarket raises $50M to scale AI in food supply chains (Source)
AI-voice startup ElevenLabs raises $500M at $11B valuation (Source)
Women’s telehealth startup Midi Health raises $100M at $1B valuation (Source)
[EquityList] What’s new?
At EquityList, we believe the systems that help stakeholders build wealth should also protect inheritance.
To that effect, we recently launched ‘Beneficiaries’, a complete module to help stakeholders protect their equity inheritance — using verified beneficiaries/nominees, formal acknowledgment, and secure documentation.
Watch our announcement below:
See you next week,
Team EquityList
