Elon Musk has pledged to give one share of his rocket and artificial intelligence company SpaceX to every child in the United States next year, describing the move as the first of many such gifts.
“Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America. This will be the first of many,” the SpaceX chief executive wrote on Monday in a post on X, the social media platform he owns.
The announcement came shortly after Anthropic, an artificial intelligence firm and SpaceX customer, said it would allocate at least 5 percent of its shares to a new “public benefit fund” for philanthropic purposes. Musk had earlier urged the company to distribute shares “directly to the public,” adding: “This is what I will be doing.”
Musk did not provide details on how the shares would be distributed, eligibility criteria or the precise timing within 2027. There are approximately 72 to 73 million children under the age of 18 in the United States, according to Census Bureau estimates. At SpaceX’s recent share price of around $146 to $148, the pledge could be worth more than $10 billion.
SpaceX went public in a record-setting initial public offering in June. Musk is by far the company’s largest shareholder. President Donald Trump later posted that the shares would be given through government-operated savings accounts for U.S. children known as Trump Accounts.
The pledge follows similar contributions by other tech executives, including SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell, who previously committed shares to millions of such accounts.
