Elon Musk said that he will give one of his SpaceX shares to every child in the United States next year. In his post on X, he called the move 'the first of many.'
What Musk said
Musk gave no details on how the giveaway would work. Forbes reports that he did not say when in 2027 the shares would go out, how eligibility would be decided, or how shares would reach millions of children. He did not define 'kid' or say whether accounts would be set up for each child.
Prompted by Anthropic's fund
The pledge came hours after Musk responded to Anthropic's announcement of a public benefit fund. Anthropic plans to commit 5 percent of its shares to the fund, a stake that could grow with the company's valuation. Musk replied that he recommends giving shares directly to the public, and said that was what he would do.
What it could be worth
CNBC calculates the gift at about $10.5 billion. That figure uses SpaceX's Friday closing price of $146.03 and an estimated 72 million US children. CoinCentral says the stock closed that day down 1.74%. BeInCrypto puts the total nearer $10.2 billion on a count of about 70 million children, so the figure depends on who counts as a child.
Musk owns about 4.8 billion SpaceX shares, according to an August SEC filing cited by CNBC. A pledge of this size would therefore be a small fraction of his holding. His stake is reportedly at 48.4 percent, with about 85 percent of voting power.
