So it was a buyback?

To the best of my understanding, it wasn’t a “buyback” as the money came from the new investors and not from the company itself. The new owner of the options (or shares) that were previously mine is the new investor — and again, this is what I understand, it might or might not be the actual case. None of it is my business or of any interest to me, though.

Technical term is “tender offer”, not necessarily buyback - other investors can participate too

long ago in some deals, you the junior person had to get the money to pay the tax on the transfer before you had a right to sell.. therefore, there was an intermediate step where the junior person might have to borrow money to complete the deal; failing borrowing, the junior person may not be able to take the compensation.

thats still common in less sophisticated startups and markets (they think they are sophisticated though, it just depends on which VCs gave them which legal counsel)

but there are a lot of lenders for cashless exercise