Elon Musk announced that he plans, starting next year, to give one SpaceX share to every minor living in the United States. The news comes after days of back-and-forth accusations between the SpaceX boss ad the Trump Administration over who made the decision to throttle connection speeds to the Starshield military broadband service relied on by Ukraine in its war against Russia.
According to recent data filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in August, the entrepreneur owns about 4.8 billion shares. If share options and unvested shares are also taken into account, that figure rises to 6.4 billion. This gives him an economic interest of roughly 48.4 per cent in the space company.
According to the US census, in July 2025 there were about 72 million residents of the United States under the age of 18. If Musk gives each of them one share, the distribution represents a value of around $10.5 billion (€9.3 billion). That calculation is based on the most recent closing price of $146.03 per share.
When posting the news on X, Musk suggested that this initiative would be the first in a series of similar donations, although he did not explain the logistics of the distribution.
Inspiration from Anthropic
This proposal also follows a similar announcement from Anthropic, which plans to allocate 5% of its share capital to a public-benefit fund.
Musk responded to Anthropic’s plan on X, suggesting that shares should be distributed directly to citizens instead of being managed through a fund; this served as the trigger for his own announcement.
If shareholders give their approval, Anthropic’s fund will start with a 5% stake. The board of directors can further increase that stake by 2 percentage points for each 50% rise in the company’s valuation above a threshold that has not yet been specified.
Anthropic stated that these resources can be used for traditional charitable donations, direct payments to specific groups, or innovative strategies to mitigate the economic impact and job losses caused by AI.
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