Musk promises a SpaceX share to every American child after Anthropic pledges 5% of its stock

Elon Musk said on Monday that he would give one of his SpaceX shares to every “kid” in America next year¹. “Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America. This will be the first of many,” he wrote on X just before 4 a.m. Eastern time¹. He did not specify whether “kid” meant all minors under 18 or some other status, did not elaborate on what “first of many” meant, and did not answer accounts asking whether he meant all children present in the United States or only citizens¹.

Estimates of the size differ. Axios put it at roughly $11 billion at current stock prices, nearly double Michael Dell’s record-breaking gift to Trump accounts¹. Business Insider valued the 2027 giveaway at roughly $10.5 billion at current market prices⁶. Forbes⁵ and Newsweek⁷ reported the pledge in the same terms, with no mechanism yet described.

The pledge it followed

The BBC reported that Musk’s announcement came after Anthropic pledged to create a public benefit fund ahead of its stock market listing². The Financial Times reported that Anthropic has committed 5 per cent of its shares to that fund³, and the Washington Post reported that chief executive Dario Amodei and the company’s five other cofounders established it⁴. Semafor reported the commitment as at least 5 per cent of shares, as the company prepares for a record-breaking initial public offering in the face of increasingly negative public reaction to AI⁸.

Why it matters to investors

The difference between the two structures is the whole story. A fund holding 5 per cent of a company decides later what the money does^3,4; shares handed to individuals transfer the asset itself. Musk made that the explicit point of his own plan, saying he recommends giving shares directly to the public and that “this is what I will be doing”⁹.

The Anthropic pledge drew a mixed response from inside the industry, with doubts raised by former White House AI adviser David Sacks⁹ and a wider range of reactions collected by Yahoo Finance¹¹. For public-market investors the practical questions are unanswered on both sides: Anthropic has not said what the fund will support ahead of its listing⁸, and Musk has not said how a private, unlisted holding would be delivered, held or valued for every child in the country^1,6.