Elon Musk said Monday that he plans to give one of his personal SpaceX shares to every child in America next year. “Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America. This will be the first of many,” he wrote in a post to X just before 4 a.m. ET.
There are just over 72 million people under 18 in the US, according to Census Bureau estimates, and at Friday’s closing price of $146.03, that’d be a market value of a little over $10.5 billion. Musk held 6.42 billion SpaceX shares as of June 30, according to an August SEC filing, meaning a giveaway of 72 million shares would be about 1.1% of his total holdings. Forbes calculates Musk’s net worth at approximately $908.5 billion, placing the pledge at roughly 1% of his current fortune.
Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America.
This will be the first of many.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2026
The timing isn’t strange though, specially considering how Elon Musk generally reacts to competitors. Musk’s post came a few hours after Anthropic promised to put 5% of its shares into a new “public benefit fund,” which it intends to use to make large donations to traditional nonprofits or direct distributions to specific populations after its upcoming IPO. Musk had replied directly to Anthropic’s announcement, suggesting the company should give “directly to the public” instead, then added, “This is what I will be doing,” in another reply four hours later — before announcing his own pledge overnight.
If it happens as described, it would be one of the largest individual stock gifts of its kind. It’d be a roughly $11 billion giveaway at current stock prices, nearly double Michael Dell’s record-breaking Trump Accounts gift, the government-linked children’s savings program that has already drawn stock donations from other wealthy donors. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and her husband pledged in July to donate one SpaceX share to each of roughly 2 million children already signed up for a Trump Account, prioritizing children from lower-income households and in SpaceX’s home state of Texas.
Musk’s post left the mechanics unresolved. He did not specify if “kid” meant all minors under 18 or some other status, nor did he elaborate on what “first of many” meant, and he did not reply to X accounts asking if he meant all kids present in the US, or just citizens. The post offered no details on eligibility, age thresholds, distribution mechanics, or whether a custodial structure would be involved.
Musk owns more than 6.4 billion shares of SpaceX, is the company’s largest shareholder, and can’t sell or trade most of it until June 2027, after it went public in what was the biggest initial public offering in history. He signed the Giving Pledge in 2012, the commitment by the world’s richest people to give away half their fortunes.