Elon Musk says he will give a SpaceX share to ‘every kid in America’

Gregg Newton/AFP/Getty Images

Elon Musk has said he will give every child in America a stake in SpaceX, his $2 trillion aerospace and artificial intelligence company, as tech firms face intensifying scrutiny over their social harms.

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

SpaceX only began trading publicly in June (and had the biggest initial public offering in history ). The company’s shares were trading for about $146 when the market closed on Friday.

Musk’s proposal was thin on detail. It is not clear how those shares would be distributed to the tens of millions of American children or whether all of them would even be eligible.

According to the United States Census Bureau, there are roughly 73 million people under the age of 18, making Musk’s potential giveaway worth about $10.7 billion at SpaceX’s current share price.

Offering young people a stake in the US stock market isn’t a new idea. This month, the Treasury Department automatically signed up millions of under-18s to Trump Accounts, a new federal savings and investment vehicle, with children born between the start of 2025 and the end of 2028 eligible for a one-off $1,000 government contribution.

Musk’s offer came in response to Anthropic’s announcement on Sunday that it will commit at least 5% of its shares — worth $48 billion at the private company’s latest valuation — to a “Public Benefit Fund” that will donate money to social causes.

The fund could make “large donations” to non-profit organizations or “direct distributions to specific populations,” the company wrote on its website, adding that the money could help mitigate the impact of artificial intelligence on people’s jobs.

Musk retorted on X : “I recommend giving the shares directly to the public… This is what I will be doing.”

Both offers come as AI companies face intense backlash over the safety of their products (Anthropic itself recently warned of the “existential risk to humanity” posed by the technology), the potential for AI to push humans out of their jobs en masse, as well as the social and environmental impact of the industry’s gargantuan data center build-out.

Tech titans more broadly are catching heat.

New movies like “The Social Reckoning” — about a Facebook employee blowing the whistle on unsafe company practices — and documentary “You Can See Everything” — following convicted blood testing start-up founder and convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes — are helping to remind audiences of the long-running recklessness of some in Big Tech.

格雷格·牛顿/法新社/盖蒂图片社

埃隆·马斯克表示，他将让美国的每个孩子都持有他旗下价值 2 万亿美元的航空航天和人工智能公司 SpaceX 的股份，因为科技公司正因其社会危害而面临越来越严格的审查。

“明年，我会把我持有的SpaceX股份分给美国的每个孩子，”他周一在X上写道。“这将是众多捐赠中的第一个。”

SpaceX今年6月才开始公开交易（并且是历史上规模最大的首次公开募股）。截至上周五收盘，该公司股价约为每股146美元。

马斯克的提议缺乏细节。目前尚不清楚这些股份将如何分配给数千万美国儿童，也不清楚他们是否都有资格获得。

根据美国人口普查局的数据，美国约有 7300 万 18 岁以下的人口，按 SpaceX 目前的股价计算，马斯克此次潜在的捐赠价值约为 107 亿美元。

让年轻人参与美国股市投资并非新想法。本月，财政部自动为数百万18岁以下的未成年人注册了“特朗普账户”，这是一种新的联邦储蓄和投资工具，2025年初至2028年底出生的儿童有资格获得一次性1000美元的政府补贴。

马斯克的提议是对 Anthropico 公司周日宣布的一项声明的回应。该声明称，该公司将至少拿出 5% 的股份（按这家私营公司的最新估值计算，价值 480 亿美元）设立一个“公共福利基金”，用于向社会事业捐款。

该公司在其网站上写道，该基金可以向非营利组织“捐赠巨款”或“直接向特定人群发放资金”，并补充说，这笔钱可以帮助减轻人工智能对人们工作的影响。

马斯克在X上反驳道：“我建议直接将股份出售给公众……我也会这样做。”

这两项提议出台之际，人工智能公司正面临着对其产品安全性的强烈反对（Anthropic 公司最近警告称，该技术对人类构成“生存风险”），人工智能有可能大规模地将人类挤出工作岗位，以及该行业庞大的数据中心建设对社会和环境的影响。

科技巨头们正面临更广泛的压力。

像《社会清算》（讲述一位 Facebook 员工揭露公司不安全行为的故事）和纪录片《一切尽收眼底》（讲述被定罪的血液检测初创公司创始人兼诈骗犯伊丽莎白·霍姆斯的故事）这样的新电影，正在帮助观众回忆起大型科技公司中一些人长期以来的鲁莽行为。