American billionaire Elon Musk pledges $10.5 billion in SpaceX shares to US children

American billionaire Elon Musk said on Monday that he will give one of his SpaceX shares to every child in the United States next year, a pledge worth about $10.5 billion at current prices.

"Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America," Musk wrote on X. "This will be the first of many."

He did not say who would qualify, how the shares would be delivered or when in 2027 the transfers would take place.

SpaceX closed at $146.03 on Friday. With roughly 72 million Americans under the age of 18, one share each adds up to a little over $10.5 billion. The stock rose about 1.5% to $148.27 in premarket trading on Monday after the post.

A reply to Anthropic

The pledge followed an announcement on Sunday by Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the Claude chatbot, that it would set up a Public Benefit Fund. Anthropic said it would start by committing 5% of its shares to the fund and could add up to 2% more for every 50% rise in the company's value above a set baseline, taking the total to roughly 20% of its shares. The fund could make large donations to nonprofits or distribute money directly to specific groups of people.

Musk, whose own artificial intelligence business competes with Anthropic, responded on X. "I recommend giving the shares directly to the public," he wrote. "This is what I will be doing."

The gift would rank among the largest to American children. Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, pledged $6.25 billion in December 2025 to seed the new "Trump accounts," tax-advantaged investment accounts for children created by last year's federal tax law. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell has already given hundreds of millions of dollars in SpaceX stock to children's accounts.

A small share of his fortune

Measured against Musk's wealth, the pledge is modest. Musk, the world's richest person, is worth more than $900 billion, most of it in SpaceX and Tesla stock, which puts the gift at a little over 1% of his fortune. He owns billions of SpaceX shares and controls most of the company's voting power.

SpaceX went public on June 12 in the largest initial public offering on record. The shares priced at $135 and closed their first day of trading at $161. They later climbed above $200 before falling back below $150, giving the company a market value of about $1.9 trillion. Most of that value reflects investors' bets on Musk's plans in artificial intelligence and satellite internet rather than the rocket launch business on its own.

Musk has a long history of announcing plans on X before the details are settled. Neither he nor SpaceX has said how the gift would be structured, how it would be taxed or how shares would be held for children too young to own them directly.