Shares would likely flow through Treasury’s Trump Accounts
Musk announced the pledge in a post on X early Monday, writing that “Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America” and that “This will be the first of many.” SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment, and it was not immediately clear how the shares would be distributed, who would receive them, or when the transfer might begin.
The Journal estimated the gift’s value at roughly $10 billion, based on SpaceX’s Friday closing price of $146.03 and a Census Bureau count of approximately 73 million children under 18. Musk is the world’s richest person, with a net worth of more than $900 billion — a majority of it tied to SpaceX, according to a Journal analysis published earlier this year. That same analysis calculated Musk has earned $3.6 million an hour over his 31-year career in technology and engineering.
The announcement came one day after Anthropic, an AI competitor, said it plans to commit 5% of its shares to a new “public benefit fund” with the flexibility to make charitable donations or direct money to “specific populations.” Musk responded by suggesting Anthropic should give the shares directly to the public.
The most likely distribution channel would be the Treasury Department’s Trump Accounts program, which is autoenrolling tens of millions of American children into investment accounts. New Treasury rules issued last month allow wealthy donors to contribute stock while avoiding capital-gains taxes. The Treasury has said donors were more interested in giving when children’s accounts were invested in a single company rather than the broad index funds that parents’ own contributions are placed in. Under the rules, families cannot refuse a stock donation and generally cannot sell the donated shares for five years.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and her husband have already pledged to donate one share to each of the roughly two million American children participating in the Trump Accounts initiative. Michael and Susan Dell have separately pledged $6.25 billion to the program.
Musk has a record of large charitable giving. In 2021, he gave roughly $5.7 billion of Tesla shares to charity. That same year, he publicly challenged World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley, who had urged billionaires to “step up now, on a one-time basis” to address global hunger, telling CNN that “$6 billion to help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don’t reach them. It’s not complicated.” Musk responded on social media, pledging to sell Tesla stock to fund the effort if the agency could demonstrate how $6 billion would resolve the crisis. It remained unclear whether the World Food Program received any funds from Musk.