Elon Musk said he will give one of his SpaceX shares to every child in the United States in 2027, a pledge that would be worth more than $10 billion at the company's current $146 share price and equal roughly 1% of his $1 trillion net worth. SpaceX is described as Musk's combination spaceflight and AI company. The announcement affects the more than 70 million children under 18 in the U.S., according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics.
How Musk would carry out the give is not clear. In a separate post, he said he wants to hand the shares directly to the public and that this would be the first of many shares he will donate. Musk owns around 849 million Class A common shares of SpaceX and more than 5.5 billion Class B supervoting shares, and the source article notes he stands to earn many more.
The pledge comes against the backdrop of a Treasury program set up by President Donald Trump, whom Musk spent around $300 million to help elect. The program, called Trump Accounts, creates bank accounts for children that can accept stock donations from wealthy donors.
Musk's post followed Anthropic's promise, made a few hours earlier, to place 5% of its shares into a new public benefit fund. Anthropic intends to use that fund for large donations to traditional nonprofits or for direct distributions to specific populations after its upcoming IPO. On Sunday afternoon, Musk replied directly to Anthropic's post on X about the fund, suggesting the company give directly to the public instead, and wrote in another reply four hours later that this is what he would be doing. Overnight, he announced his plans to donate SpaceX stock.
Musk's charitable giving to date has run almost entirely through his own Musk Foundation, which is the fifth-largest private charitable foundation in the U.S. despite his negative opinions about philanthropy. A recent review by The Economist found that most of the money the Musk Foundation has laid out over the years went to entities tied to Musk in some way, with nearly 60% going to another charity called The Foundation, run by his money manager, Jared Birchall.
More company and startup news from TechManNews.
