A Circle employee used Equitybee to fund the exercise of their stock options without spending any personal savings. When Circle went public on the NYSE in June 2025, this employee retained $430,086 in proceeds.
Equitybee connects employees with investors who cover the exercise cost; employees repay only if the company has a successful exit. Circle's journey from a 2022 SPAC termination to a blockbuster 2025 IPO made timely option exercise especially critical for employees holding vested equity.
Circle (NYSE: CRCL)
IPO, JUNE 2025
$173,882
$430,086
67.03%
Circle employees who earned stock options faced a difficult decision. The company had been building toward a public listing for years, including a $9 billion SPAC deal that fell through in December 2022. By late 2024, Circle had confidentially filed its S-1, and the prospect of an IPO was becoming real. For employees with vested options, the question was urgent: spend potentially tens of thousands of dollars of their own money to exercise, knowing that the timeline and outcome remained uncertain, or risk forfeiting their equity entirely.
This dilemma is not unique to Circle. But like many startup employees, deciding how and when to exercise stock options isn't always straightforward.
Common considerations employees faced:
• Exercising can require tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars upfront
• Taxes, particularly AMT on ISOs, often create unexpected additional liabilities
• Employees may not want to lock up personal savings in a single illiquid, high-risk asset
• According to Carta, nearly 70% of employees ultimately walk away from their equity
For Circle employees, the combination of a long path to IPO and substantial exercise costs made Equitybee's non-recourse funding model especially relevant.
Circle employees used Equitybee to fund their stock option exercises in October 2024, securing a total of $173,882 in funding to cover exercise costs.
Here is how it worked for Circle employees:
• No personal cash required to exercise
• No loans, no debt, no personal liability*
• Equitybee investors provided the full exercise capital
• Employees retained their shares and became full shareholders
• Repayment occurred only after Circle's IPO
Whether the motivation was affordability, risk management, or simply preferring not to tie up personal capital in a single illiquid asset, Equitybee enabled Circle employees to become shareholders without the typical financial burden.*Assumes you comply with the agreement terms.
*Assumes you comply with the agreement terms.
When Circle went public on June 5, 2025, these employees were shareholders. Following a lockup period that expired on November 13, 2025, shares were settled on November 21, 2025, and proceeds were distributed on December 5, 2025. Through Equitybee, these employees participated in Circle's IPO upside without risking any of their own capital.
Circle employees collectively retained $430,086 in proceeds from Circle's IPO after using Equitybee to fund the exercise of their stock options, without having spent any of their own savings.
$173,882
$843,974
$430,086
67.03%
The data above reflects start-up employees that received funding to exercise their stock options through the US subsidiary Equitybee Securities Inc. (EBS) and the Israel Subsidiary Equitybee Technologies Inc. Equitybee Securities executes the private financing contract (PFC) and Equitybee Technologies executes SOFAs (Simple Options Funding Agreements). The SOFA differs from the PFC in terms of fee structures, regulatory requirements and other conditions.
Circle is another example: exercising stock options is not just about affordability - it is about timing, risk exposure, liquidity preference, and long-term financial strategy.
Thousands of startup employees have already used Equitybee to fund the exercise of their stock options, including employees at Reddit, SpaceX, Databricks, Klarna, Stripe, Monday.com, Affirm, Rippling, Discord, Wiz, and many others.
As of the date this case study was published, Equitybee has facilitated $271M+ in total capital, created 2,800+ new shareholders, and funded employees across 870+ pre-IPO companies.
Frequently asked questions
Circle employees used Equitybee's non-recourse funding model to cover the full cost of exercising their stock options in October 2024. Equitybee connected them with investors who provided $173,882 in capital, covering exercise prices and associated taxes. The employees retained their shares and became full shareholders, repaying only after Circle's IPO in June 2025.
Circle employees who exercised their stock options through Equitybee collectively retained $430,086 in proceeds from the company's IPO. On average, employees kept 67.03% of the upside from their exercised options. Through Equitybee, these employees participated in Circle's IPO upside without risking any of their own capital.
Non-recourse stock option funding is a financing model where an investor covers the cost of exercising an employee's stock options. The employee retains their shares and only repays from the proceeds if there is a liquidity event that results in the shares becoming liquid, such as an IPO, acquisition, tender offer, or secondary sale. If no such event occurs, the employee owes nothing. As of the date this case study was published, Equitybee has facilitated this model for employees at over 870 pre-IPO companies.
No. Equitybee uses a non-recourse funding structure, meaning the employee's repayment obligation is tied to a liquidity event that results in the shares becoming liquid - such as an IPO, acquisition, tender offer, or secondary sale. If no such event occurs, the employee does not owe anything. The financial risk of the exercise is borne by the investor, not the employee.
Equitybee can help employees who are still employed as well as those who have left and are within their post-termination exercise window. Many employees face a 90-day deadline to exercise options after leaving a company, and the cost of exercising - often tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars - makes Equitybee's non-recourse model especially valuable in these situations.
As of the date this case study was published, Equitybee's average funding timeline is approximately 14 days from application to capital delivery. In fast-track situations, funding can be completed in as few as 2-3 days. The process is designed to meet time-sensitive deadlines, such as post-termination exercise windows or pending liquidity events.
Sources:
• Circle IPO Pricing - CNBC
• Circle NYSE Debut - CoinDesk
• Circle $400M Funding Round - TechCrunch
• Employee equity statistics - Carta
• Fundraising round data - Pitchbook, Inc.
