Equitybee's newest report, The Startup Employee Equity Report 2026, is built on 9,042 new-hire option grants across 2,438 startups. The number everyone will quote is that grants are the biggest they have been in a decade. The number that matters for your bank account is what it now costs to turn those options into shares you actually own.
In 2016, the median new-hire grant in Equitybee's dataset was worth $12,074 on the day it was granted. In 2025 it was $59,618, and the first half of 2026 came in at $66,960 (a partial year, so treat it as provisional). Even after adjusting for who is getting hired (seniority, company stage, function, industry), grant size reached 3.21x its 2016 level in 2025 and 3.33x in the first half of 2026.
Grant Size here means the fair market value of the shares behind your options on the day you received them: option count multiplied by the per-share value set in the company's 409A valuation, the independent appraisal private companies use to price their common stock.
For most U.S. startup option grants, that per-share value is also your strike price. So the number that measures your grant also tells you, before taxes, what it costs to exercise all of it.
The median recent new-hire grant (January 2022 through June 2026) was $56,829. The middle half ranged from $21,980 to $156,308. [1]
In cash to exercise in full, before taxes:
- 54% of recent new-hire grants required at least $50,000
- 35% required at least $100,000
- 17% required at least $250,000
- 4% required $1 million or more
More than half of recent grants cost at least $50,000 to exercise in full, and that is before taxes.
Taxes can add a lot on top. Exercising incentive stock options (ISOs) can trigger the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), a parallel tax calculation that can apply when the share value is above your strike price, and non-qualified stock options (NSOs) are taxed as ordinary income on that spread at exercise. The grant-date number is the floor, not the ceiling.
Venture funding peaked in 2021, reset in 2022 and 2023, and came back concentrated in AI: US VC deal value reached $358.2 billion in 2025, the second-highest year in a decade behind only 2021, with AI accounting for 65.4% of it (PitchBook-NVCA). [2] In 2026 the records moved to the companies themselves. SpaceX priced the largest IPO in history in June at about $1.8 trillion, after 24 years as a private company. [3] Anthropic raised at a $965 billion valuation in May, up from $380 billion in February. [4][5] OpenAI's August employee share sale valued it at $852 billion. [6] PitchBook now counts 1,743 unicorns worth $8.2 trillion combined, and the first half of 2026 alone saw more unicorn deal value than all of 2021. [5]
Companies are also staying private far longer: the median company going public was 5 years old in 1999, 11 in 2021, and 12 to 14 in 2024 and 2025 (Jay Ritter, University of Florida). [7] More of the growth now happens before the IPO, in the years when employees receive and exercise their options.
Your strike price comes from the 409A valuation of the company's common stock, refreshed at least every 12 months, and it tends to follow the company's valuation (not one-for-one, since investors buy preferred shares with protections common stock lacks). When valuations step up, new hires receive options at a higher strike, so the same option count means a bigger grant and a bigger exercise bill. Employees already holding options see the spread between strike and current value widen: good news on paper, and for ISO holders a larger potential AMT bill at exercise.
The report puts a number on the link: in a matched subset of the data, a tenfold difference in company valuation was associated with a grant size 2.5 times as large. You can see 2021 in the numbers too. The median new-hire grant went from $26,000 in 2020 to $48,000 in 2021 and $58,000 in 2022, and never returned to pre-2021 levels. [1]
A bigger number on your grant letter does not always mean a bigger slice of the company. It can mean the same slice at a higher entry price.
The report's own example: 100,000 options at a $0.10 strike is a $10,000 grant; 20,000 options at $1.00 is a $20,000 grant. At a $2 share price, the "smaller" grant has a $190,000 pre-tax spread and the "bigger" one $20,000, before dilution, liquidation preferences, taxes, and fees. Grant Size is a point-in-time benchmark, not a prediction of what you would walk away with.
A few patterns from the report, as context rather than rules for any individual offer [1]:
Seniority is the biggest divider
Median grant: $24,000 for individual contributors (ICs), $51,000 for senior ICs, $86,000 for senior managers, and $346,580 for VP and C-suite roles.
Function and headquarters matter
After adjustments, Product grants were 2.08x and Engineering grants 1.99x the size of Sales grants, and Bay Area startups carried an estimated 53% premium over other locations.
Similar hires, different grants
Among pairs matched on company, function, seniority, and a 12-month window, 41% differed by more than 2x.
Similar people at similar companies receive materially different grants. Negotiate your equity as deliberately as your salary.
If you are vested, or a decision is coming (a job change, a tender offer, an expiring window), three things are worth doing this month:
1. Know your number. Vested options multiplied by strike price is your pre-tax exercise cost. Then get a tax projection from a professional, especially for ISOs, where AMT can apply.
2. Know your deadlines. Vesting dates, the expiration date, and your post-termination exercise window, which can be as short as 90 days after you leave.
3. Line up the money before you need it. Personal funds, a company liquidity program, an exercise-window extension, or third-party funding. Compare eligibility, cost, terms, and risk while you still have time.
In the first half of 2025, startup employees exercised only 32.9% of their vested, in-the-money option grants before they expired, leaving 67.1% unexercised, the highest rate Carta has recorded since at least 2019. [8] In 2021, when exits looked close, the exercise rate was 51.3%. In most of those cases, the outcome was not a bad decision. It was no decision at all.
Run the numbers while the decision is still yours to make.
Full report, with every breakdown: The Startup Employee Equity Report 2026.
If the exercise cost is what is standing between you and your shares, Equitybee is one option: you get the funding to cover the exercise cost and applicable taxes, repay only from the proceeds of a successful exit, and owe nothing back if there is no exit. See if your company is eligible at equitybee.com/employees.
Coming next month: what your options are actually worth. 409A values, preferred versus common stock, and why the number in your equity portal is not the number you would see at an exit.
1. Equitybee, The Startup Employee Equity Report 2026 (August 2026): grant sizes, exercise-cost thresholds, seniority, function, geography, and comparable-hire figures, the 2016 to H1 2026 medians, and the valuation-to-grant-size association.
2. PitchBook-NVCA, Venture Monitor Q4 2025 (January 2026): 2025 US VC deal value and AI's share.
3. Reuters, SpaceX raises $75bn in blockbuster IPO (June 11, 2026): IPO price, implied valuation, and largest-IPO-ever status.
4. Anthropic, Anthropic raises $30B Series G at $380B valuation (February 12, 2026).
5. PitchBook, Q2 2026 Global Unicorn Tracker (August 11, 2026): unicorn count and aggregate valuation, H1 2026 unicorn deal value versus 2021, Anthropic's $965 billion valuation, and SpaceX's 24 years to listing.
6. CNBC, OpenAI wraps $7 billion share sale ahead of potential IPO (August 10, 2026): $852 billion valuation.
7. Jay Ritter, University of Florida, Initial Public Offerings: Updated Statistics, Table 4 (updated December 24, 2025): median age of companies at IPO.
8. Carta, State of Startup Compensation: H1 2025 (August 26, 2025): exercise and unexercised rates for vested, in-the-money option grants.
Equitybee does not provide tax or financial advice. Always consult a qualified professional about your specific situation.
Data in this edition comes from The Startup Employee Equity Report 2026 (Equitybee, August 2026). The dataset reflects employees who engaged with Equitybee rather than a random sample of all startup employees, and grant figures describe value at the grant date, not future value or expected proceeds. Patterns observed in the data are associations, not rules for individual offers. The underlying data used in this report has not been independently audited.Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs). PFCs could limit your profits. PFCs are brokered by Equitybee Securities LLC, member FINRA.