NEW YORK – Elon Musk pledged to distribute a share of SpaceX to each American child, posting the move just hours after artificial intelligence competitor Anthropic said it would set aside a portion of its shares for the public benefit.
“Next year (2027), I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America,” the company’s chief executive officer wrote on X, the social media platform he owns. “This will be the first of many.”
It is not clear how such share contributions would work, and Musk did not elaborate on his donation plans.
There are about 72 million children in the US, according to estimates from the US Census Bureau, which would make the donation worth about US$10.5 billion (S$13.4 billion) at the current US$146 share price.
His post came after Anthropic disclosed plans to place 5% of its shares in a fund to make donations that address “the public good”.
Regulators across the globe have increased calls for regulating artificial intelligence after insiders flagged the possibility of catastrophic scenarios.
Anthropic, which is preparing for a blockbuster public listing, has frequently raised concerns about broad societal risks and dangers of AI. The Claude developer said some of its new fund would go to addressing the “labour market impacts” of the technology.
After Anthropic’s announcement on Oct 18, Musk replied to the company’s X account to say he recommends giving shares “directly to the public”.
Musk’s comments come after US President Donald Trump’s administration set up the Trump Accounts initiative, which provides US$1,000 to American children born between 2025 and 2028.
SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said earlier in 2026 that she and her husband had gifted SpaceX stock to a Trump Account for more than 2 million children in the US.
Musk is by far the world’s richest person with a net worth of more than US$900 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His SpaceX shares account for the vast majority of that wealth, at about US$700 billion, with the rest coming from Tesla, Boring and Neuralink.
The billionaire has a history of floating ideas that do not materialise or suggesting plans he later explains away as jokes. Musk pinned his latest post about SpaceX shares to the top of his X page.
Anthropic made its public benefit announcement as it heads toward a highly anticipated initial public offering that could value the AI pioneer at US$1.5 trillion to US$2 trillion.
The company said it could add an additional 2% to the fund at the board’s discretion for every 50% increase in the company’s value above a set baseline. BLOOMBERG