Musk’s announcement came a day after the AI company Anthropic announced it was “committing” 5% of its shares to a public benefit fund that would direct donations towards established nonprofit organizations or “specific populations.”
Musk didn’t miss an opportunity to try and one-up a rival — and client — in the AI landscape. “I recommend giving the shares directly to the public,” he wrote in a reply to Anthropic’s announcement on X. “This is what I will be doing.”
Unanswered questions
The mercurial billionaire’s latest initiative has left many blanks in this plan that still need to be filled.
It’s not yet clear which children would be eligible, whether they must hold onto SpaceX stock for a set period of time before they’re permitted to sell, or how they’ll be able to claim it. SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Moneywise.
There are roughly 72 million kids who are 18 and under in the US, according to 2025 Census Bureau data. SpaceX trading price closed at $146 per share on Friday afternoon.
That would amount to a $10.5 billion stock donation for American kids from Musk, who has a $904-billion net worth. The total may vary, since SpaceX’s share price has swung sharply since its blockbuster initial public offering in July. Anthropic is similarly preparing for an IPO later this year that could break SpaceX’s record valuation.
The next class of SpaceX shareholders: Children?
The likeliest path for children to obtain their SpaceX share is through the President Donald Trump-branded investment accounts, otherwise known as “Trump accounts.” Musk hinted towards it in another X post as well.
At the end of September, the Treasury Department published new rules allowing wealthy individuals and publicly-traded companies to donate stock into Trump accounts. It came with two strings attached: Account-holders, like the parents, can’t pick or reject donated shares, and they’re restricted from selling them for five years. The accounts are claimed to provide children born during Trump’s second term a leg up in life, with a $1,000 seed donation from the Treasury that’s invested in low-cost index funds.
Treasury officials justified the move by stating that allowing stock donations from companies “may lead recipients and their families to feel that they have a stake in the fate of the corporation to a greater extent than if the child’s holdings of the corporation were only through an index fund.” This has raised criticism from experts that the policy change may shield corporations from stricter regulations or tax increases that could hurt its share prices.
SpaceX has already joined a growing roster of companies and philanthropists making donations into Trump accounts. In early July, the company announced a donation of two million SpaceX shares for children in lower-income families, many of them residing in Texas, a major hub of its space launch operations and site of its corporate headquarters.
Joseph Zeballos-Roig is a policy and politics journalist based in Washington D.C with a focus on economics. He is experienced in connecting the significance of events in the capital to the lives of everyday Americans whether its taxes, tariffs, interest rates or federal programs.
