Elon Musk says he will give a SpaceX share to every child in America next year

Elon Musk says every child in the United States will get a small piece of SpaceX next year. In a Monday post on X the billionaire wrote that he would hand one of his own SpaceX shares to "every kid in America" and called it "the first of many."

A giveaway worth billions on paper

SpaceX is the rocket and artificial intelligence company Musk runs. It has traded on the stock market only since June, when it pulled off the largest public debut ever recorded. Its stock finished Friday at roughly $146 and the company is valued at about $2 trillion.

Federal census figures put the number of Americans younger than 18 at about 73 million. At Friday's price one share apiece would come to roughly $10.7 billion.

Plenty of open questions

Musk did not explain how the stock would reach tens of millions of children, who would hold it for minors or whether every child would qualify. He gave no timing beyond next year.

Giving kids an early stake in the market is already happening in Washington. This month the Treasury Department automatically enrolled millions of Americans under 18 in the new federal Trump Accounts savings and investment program. Children born from the start of 2025 through the end of 2028 can receive a one-time $1,000 deposit from the government.

A reply to a rival

The pledge came one day after Anthropic, an AI company that competes with Musk's businesses, said it would set aside at least 5% of its stock for a new Public Benefit Fund. At the company's latest private valuation that stake is worth about $48 billion. The plan still needs stockholder approval. The board could also add another 2% of shares for each 50% rise in the company's value above a set baseline.

Anthropic said the fund could make large gifts to nonprofit groups or send money straight to certain groups of people, including workers whose jobs are hit by artificial intelligence. The company has already put $200 million toward studying how AI could shake up the labor market.

Musk answered on X that he recommends "giving the shares directly to the public" and said that is what he intends to do.

Tech titans under a brighter spotlight

Both offers arrive as AI companies face rising anger over the safety of their products, the fear that they will push people out of work in large numbers and the social and environmental cost of the giant data centers the industry keeps building. Musk has not said how many more share gifts he has in mind.