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Musk Pledges A SpaceX Share To "Every Kid In America" After Anthropic Unveils Murky Public Benefit Fund

Tyler Durden's Photo
by Tyler Durden
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Elon Musk said Monday that he will give one of his SpaceX shares to every child in the United States next year. "Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America," he wrote in an Oct. 19 post on X, adding, "This will be the first of many," the Epoch Times reported.

Close to 73 million children under 18 lived in the US as of July 2025 - so at around $147 a share, that comes to close to $11 billion of stock, about 1.5 percent of the roughly 4.8 billion SpaceX shares Musk owns, or 6.4 billion counting options and unvested awards, by the outlet's count.

Musk did not say how the shares would be distributed or whether every child would be eligible. SpaceX, which went public in June, is valued at about $2 trillion, according to the Epoch Times. The Treasury automatically enrolled tens of millions of children in Trump Accounts earlier this month and now allows donors to put stock into them, though Musk did not say he would use the program.

The pledge came a day after Anthropic said it would commit 5 percent of its shares, subject to stockholder approval, to a new Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, with 2 percent more at the board's discretion for each 50 percent rise in the company's value above a set baseline. Counting its co-founders' pledge to donate 80 percent of their equity and an employee donation match, Anthropic says roughly 20 percent of its shares are now committed to the public good.

The fund, a wholly owned LLC, might make large donations to nonprofits or "direct distributions to specific populations," with AI's effect on jobs one example. Anthropic has not said who will run it and plans to share its structure and governance "in the coming months."

"I recommend giving the shares directly to the public," Musk replied on X about two hours after Anthropic posted the plan on Sunday. Hours later he added, "This is what I will be doing."

Musk is hardly a neutral critic. SpaceX absorbed his xAI startup in February and now competes directly with Anthropic, which confidentially filed for an IPO in June and has been opening its books to Wall Street ahead of a listing.

In July, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and her husband pledged one share each for more than 2 million children through the Trump Accounts savings program, focused on lower-income children aged 11 to 17. At the $160.42 close on the day the gift was announced, more than 2 million shares came to at least $320 million. 

President Trump told CNBC on July 3 that he expected Musk to contribute SpaceX stock to Trump Accounts as well, saying, "I think that he will do that," according to Jang. Neither Musk nor SpaceX had confirmed it at the time.

In its first earnings report as a public company, on Aug. 4, SpaceX posted $7.8 billion in revenue, but Fortune reported capital spending of $18.4 billion, about $16 billion of it on AI computing, against the $13.2 billion analysts expected. The stock fell more than 5 percent.

The company reports second-quarter results after the close on Oct. 20. Market watchers project revenue of $12.74 billion to $12.89 billion, driven mainly by AI and Starlink, and earnings per share of $0.14 to $0.23, the Epoch Times said. SpaceX is also seeking to raise $40 billion to buy advanced Nvidia AI chips, which the Epoch Times said signals that Musk wants to turn it into an AI computing company.

That spending has been a worry for credit markets. We reported earlier this month that SpaceX credit risk had hit a new high on fears about its AI debt.

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