Musk pledges a SpaceX share to every child in the US next year
The giveaway to roughly 72 million children would be worth about $10.5 billion at SpaceX's latest price, but Musk gave no details on how it would work.
Elon Musk said on Monday that he will give every child in the United States one of his SpaceX shares next year. "This will be the first of many," he wrote on X, without explaining how the distribution would take place. Musk owns about 4.8 billion SpaceX shares according to an August filing, or 6.4 billion including unvested awards and options, a 48.4% beneficial stake.
With 72 million children under 18 in the US as of July 2025, according to census data, the pledge would amount to about $10.5 billion based on SpaceX's closing price of $146.03 on Friday. Investor Brad Gerstner, founder of Invest America and a backer of the government-sponsored "Trump Accounts" for children, praised the move and suggested the shares could be delivered through those accounts, calling it potentially "the largest philanthropic gift in history".
The announcement comes as Musk's spending is under scrutiny for political reasons: he has given more than $276 million to Republican groups since July, making him the biggest known donor of the 2026 midterm elections. His record on philanthropic promises is mixed. He contributed about $38 million to OpenAI between 2016 and 2020 after pledging up to $1 billion, and in 2021 he offered $6 billion to the UN World Food Programme if it could show how the money would be used. Source: CNBC (with The Verge)