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It seems to me that if OP had been granted 25k shares instead of 15k, he would have sold 25k shares instead of 15k. So even aside from the statute of limitations, the damages would be something like the value of 10k shares in 1993, perhaps plus 30 years of interest.

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The value in 1996 when he could have exercised these options was probably $0 since Nvidia hadn’t gone public and was at risk of going bankrupt.

Apparently he parted with the 15k shares at some point though, so presumably whatever price those were sold for is what all 25k would have been sold for, had he received them.

This is a great observation. Options induce the worst kind of FOMO. People think: if only I had exercised I would now have $HUGE amount of shares. But the general counter-factual is that you exercise them and sell them pretty soon.

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