Musk pledges $10bn in SpaceX shares for US children: Who really gains?

The pledge, which Trump says will go through accounts with his name, comes two weeks before the US midterms.

US President Donald Trump presents the National Medal of Science to Elon Musk during the 'Golden Age of American Innovation Summit' at the Institute of Peace in Washington, DC [File: AFP]

Elon Musk has pledged to give one SpaceX share to every child in the United States next year – a gift that could be worth more than $10bn.

“This will be the first of many,” the world’s richest man wrote on X on Monday.

About 73 million children under 18 live in the US, according to US Census Bureau data.

At Friday’s closing price of $146.03, the pledge would be worth about $10.7bn.

President Donald Trump thanked Musk on his Truth Social platform, and claimed the shares would be given to children “through TRUMP ACCOUNTS”, the tax-friendly investment accounts for children created under his signature tax and spending law last year.

The pledge comes two weeks before the November 3 midterm elections.

Musk is the biggest known donor in the run-up to those elections, having given more than $276m to Republican groups since July.

Musk has not said which children will qualify, when the shares will be handed over, or how.

So how might the giveaway work, and who stands to gain?

Here’s what you need to know:

How much is a SpaceX share worth, and how much is Musk giving away?

SpaceX, the world’s seventh-largest company, began trading on the Nasdaq in June at an initial public offering price of $135 per share. That price has been volatile. SpaceX shares have fallen 35.3 percent since peaking days after the listing.

The shares are currently trading at around $146 a share. Every $1 move in the share price will change the gift’s value by about $73m.

Musk owns 4.8 billion shares in SpaceX outright, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in August.

Including unvested awards and stock options, his stake rises to about 6.4 billion shares, or 48.4 percent of the company.

Giving away 73 million shares would reduce his outright holding by about 1.5 percent, barely affecting his control of the company. That’s because his voting power, which is currently about 82 percent because SpaceX has two classes of shares, would fall by only 0.1 percentage points, according to a Bloomberg Opinion calculation.

It would be the largest single gift linked to Trump accounts so far.

How would the shares reach children?

Trump said the shares would be held in Trump accounts, and Musk thanked Brad Gerstner, the tech investor behind the accounts, for “helping enable this”.

Nearly 70 million Trump accounts have been opened, one for every child under 18 with a Social Security number, according to the White House. Investments held in Trump accounts can roll up with tax deferred until they are withdrawn when a child turns 18. Alternatively, they can be rolled into a tax-friendly IRA – a retirement account for adults – and continue with the tax-friendly status.

Under Treasury rules published on September 30, donors can now gift individual company stock to children via the accounts. Families and friends making regular contributions to a child’s Trump account are limited to investing low-risk index funds.

Families cannot refuse the shares on behalf of their children and generally cannot sell them for five years, or until the end of the year the child turns 17 if that comes sooner.

Musk cannot sell or trade most of his SpaceX shares until June 2027, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The accounts carry the president’s name, and Trump has tied himself closely to the gift.

He thanked Musk on Truth Social, saying the pledge was “exactly what was envisioned when we created TRUMP ACCOUNTS”.

The White House has presented the accounts as a signature achievement of Trump’s tax law, noting that “every single Democrat voted against” the legislation.

The pledge also marks a public reconciliation. Musk and Trump fell out in 2025 over Trump’s tax-and-spending bill, a rift Trump later called a “little dispute”.

Children will be gaining a share for free, but the gift could also save Musk money.

Donors who give appreciated stock to charity avoid capital gains tax and can usually claim a deduction, the US broadcaster CNBC reported.

As SpaceX’s founder, Musk paid very little for his shares, and selling $10.7bn of them could mean a tax bill of up to about $2.5bn.

It is “a popular practice for particularly high-income taxpayers that would otherwise be paying a high rate”, Will McBride, chief economist at the Tax Foundation, told the broadcaster in May.

Ann Lipton, a law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, told Inc. magazine that millions of shareholders unable to sell would also have an interest in SpaceX’s success and in “minimising its regulatory burdens”.

For Mitchell Downey, an economist at Stockholm University’s Institute for International Economic Studies who studies political influence in the US, the more striking part of the pledge is what he called “the horseshoe aspect of this” – the idea that right-wing and left-wing policies can curve around and meet.

For decades, progressives have backed the concept of Child Development Accounts, investment accounts for every newborn designed to reduce inequality in wealth, he said. The idea was associated with groups such as the Democracy Collaborative but struggled to gain federal support. Now the idea may become more mainstream as a result of Musk’s gift and Trump accounts.

“It always felt like it might be out of reach,” Downey said. “But I don’t see how Musk’s proposal would be possible without building some infrastructure like this.”

Why is the timing important?

The pledge comes just two weeks before the November 3 midterm elections, which will decide control of the two houses of Congress. All seats in the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate are up for re-election.

Trump’s approval rating has meanwhile fallen to a record low of 33 percent, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, with many political observers expecting to see the Republicans lose seats to the Democratic Party as a result.

Musk, who campaigned with Trump in 2024 and spearheaded the president’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative to reduce the size of the federal workforce, has contributed heavily to Republican candidates in advance of the midterm elections.

US President Donald Trump dances as he walks off stage after speaking at a midterm campaign rally at Pitt-Greenville Airport in Greenville, North Carolina [AFP]

Is this legal, and why is it controversial?

Downey said he does not believe the pledge raises legal concerns.

“Individuals are allowed to spend their money in support of a politician,” he told Al Jazeera. “The law only gets violated when either it isn’t publicly reported, or it is part of an explicit and documented quid-pro-quo.”

But he said it does raise ethical concerns, though not ones unique to Musk’s approach.

Those concerns relate to “the outsized role that external donors play in US elections”, Downey said. In his view, they apply much like when someone spends heavily on television advertisements for a candidate.

Has anyone done this before?

Downey said the precedent was “hard to assess”.

Because Musk is the richest person in modern history, he said, it is perhaps unsurprising that he is “doing something that involves more money than other very rich people have done”.

He pointed to the Gates Foundation’s spending over the past three decades as “a different type of ‘gift to the public’”. The difference, he said, is that the Gates Foundation focuses funding on health crises in countries in Africa and South Asia – not on voters in the US.

Last year, Gates pledged to “give away virtually all my wealth through the Gates Foundation over the next 20 years to the cause of saving and improving lives around the world”.

特朗普表示，这项承诺将通过他名下的账户进行，而此时距离美国中期选举还有两周时间。

美国总统唐纳德·特朗普在华盛顿特区和平研究所举行的“美国创新黄金时代峰会”上向埃隆·马斯克颁发国家科学奖章。[图片：法新社]

埃隆·马斯克承诺明年将向美国每个孩子赠送一份 SpaceX 股份——这份礼物价值可能超过 100 亿美元。

“这将是众多事件中的第一个，”世界首富周一在X上写道。

根据美国人口普查局的数据，美国约有7300万18岁以下的儿童。

按周五收盘价 146.03 美元计算，该质押价值约为 107 亿美元。

唐纳德·特朗普总统在他的 Truth Social 平台上感谢了马斯克，并声称这些股份将通过“特朗普账户”赠予儿童。特朗普账户是根据他去年签署的税收和支出法案为儿童设立的免税投资账户。

该承诺是在11月3日中期选举前两周做出的。

在即将到来的选举中，马斯克是已知的最大捐助者，自 7 月以来已向共和党团体捐赠了超过 2.76 亿美元。

马斯克没有透露哪些孩子有资格获得股份，何时以及如何转让股份。

那么，这次赠送活动将如何进行？谁将从中受益？

以下是您需要了解的内容：

SpaceX 的股份价值多少？马斯克又捐出了多少股份？

全球第七大公司SpaceX于6月在纳斯达克上市，首次公开募股（IPO）价格为每股135美元。该价格波动剧烈。SpaceX股价自上市后数日达到峰值以来，已下跌35.3%。

这些股票目前的交易价格约为每股146美元。股价每变动1美元，这份礼物的价值就会变化约7300万美元。

根据8月份提交给美国证券交易委员会（SEC）的文件显示，马斯克直接持有SpaceX 48亿股股份。

包括未归属的奖励和股票期权在内，他的持股量增至约 64 亿股，占公司股份的 48.4%。

赠送7300万股股票只会让他的持股比例减少约1.5%，几乎不会影响他对公司的控制权。这是因为，根据彭博社的计算，由于SpaceX有两种类型的股票，他目前的投票权约为82%，即使赠送7300万股，他的投票权也只会下降0.1个百分点。

这将是迄今为止与特朗普账户相关的最大单笔捐款。

这些股份如何才能惠及儿童？

特朗普表示，这些股票将存放在特朗普的账户中，马斯克感谢了这些账户背后的科技投资者布拉德·格斯特纳“帮助促成此事”。

据白宫称，目前已开设近7000万个特朗普账户，几乎每个拥有社保号码的18岁以下儿童都拥有一个。特朗普账户中的投资可以享受税收递延优惠，直至儿童年满18岁时提取。或者，这些投资也可以转入享有税收优惠的个人退休账户（IRA，一种成人退休账户），并继续享受税收优惠。

根据财政部9月30日公布的规定，捐赠者现在可以通过账户向子女赠送个别公司的股票。定期向子女的特朗普账户捐款的家人和朋友只能投资低风险的指数基金。

家人不能代表子女拒绝股份，并且通常五年内不能出售股份，或者到子女年满 17 岁的那一年年底（如果提前到来）。

据《华尔街日报》报道，马斯克在 2027 年 6 月之前不能出售或交易他持有的大部分 SpaceX 股份。

这些账户以总统的名字命名，而特朗普与这份礼物有着密切的联系。

他在 Truth Social 上感谢了马斯克，称这一承诺“正是我们创建 TRUMP ACCOUNTS 时所设想的”。

白宫将这些账目视为特朗普税法的标志性成就，并指出“每一位民主党人都投票反对”了这项立法。

这一承诺也标志着双方公开和解。马斯克和特朗普曾在2025年因特朗普的税收和支出法案而决裂，特朗普后来称这一分歧只是“小争执”。

孩子们将免费获得一份股份，但这份礼物也可能为马斯克省钱。

美国广播公司CNBC报道称，捐赠者将升值股票捐赠给慈善机构可以避免缴纳资本利得税，通常还可以申请抵扣。

作为 SpaceX 的创始人，马斯克当初购买股份的价格非常低，而出售价值 107 亿美元的股份可能意味着高达 25 亿美元的税单。

税务基金会首席经济学家威尔·麦克布莱德 (Will McBride) 在 5 月份告诉该广播公司，对于收入特别高的纳税人来说，这是一种“很受欢迎的做法，否则他们将支付很高的税率”。

科罗拉多大学博尔德分校法学教授安·利普顿告诉《Inc.》杂志，数百万无法出售股票的股东也会对 SpaceX 的成功以及“最大限度地减少其监管负担”感兴趣。

对于斯德哥尔摩大学国际经济研究所研究美国政治影响力的经济学家米切尔·唐尼来说，这项承诺最引人注目的部分是他所谓的“马蹄形方面”——即右翼和左翼政策可以弯曲并相遇的想法。

他表示，几十年来，进步人士一直支持“儿童发展账户”的概念，即为每个新生儿设立投资账户，旨在减少财富不平等。这一理念最初与“民主合作组织”（Democracy Collaborative）等团体相关，但一直难以获得联邦政府的支持。如今，由于马斯克的捐赠和特朗普的账户，这一理念可能会变得更加主流。

“感觉这似乎一直遥不可及，”唐尼说。“但如果不建设类似的基础设施，我看不出马斯克的提议如何能够实现。”

为什么时机很重要？

这项承诺是在11月3日中期选举前两周做出的，此次选举将决定国会两院的控制权。众议院所有席位和参议院三分之一的席位都将进行改选。

据《华盛顿邮报》-ABC新闻-益普索民调显示，特朗普的支持率已跌至历史新低33%，许多政治观察家预计，共和党因此将失去席位，民主党将取而代之。

马斯克曾在 2024 年与特朗普一起竞选，并牵头推动总统的政府效率提升计划，以减少联邦政府员工规模。在中期选举之前，他已向共和党候选人捐赠了大量资金。

美国总统唐纳德·特朗普在北卡罗来纳州格林维尔的皮特-格林维尔机场举行的中期竞选集会上发表讲话后，走下舞台时跳起了舞。[法新社]

这样做合法吗？为什么会引起争议？

唐尼表示，他不认为这项承诺会引发法律问题。

他对半岛电视台表示：“个人有权用自己的钱来支持政治人物。只有当这种行为没有被公开报道，或者属于明确且有据可查的利益交换时，才构成违法行为。”

但他表示，这确实引发了伦理方面的担忧，尽管这些担忧并非马斯克独有。

唐尼表示，这些担忧与“外部捐助者在美国选举中扮演的过大角色”有关。在他看来，这与有人斥巨资为候选人投放电视广告的情况非常相似。

之前有人做过类似的事情吗？

唐尼表示，这一先例“难以评估”。

他说，因为马斯克是现代史上最富有的人，所以他“所做的事情涉及的资金比其他非常富有的人所做的事情要多”，这或许并不令人惊讶。

他指出，盖茨基金会在过去三十年的支出是“一种不同类型的‘回馈公众’”。他说，区别在于盖茨基金会将资金重点用于非洲和南亚国家的健康危机，而不是美国选民。

去年，盖茨承诺“在未来20年内，通过盖茨基金会将我几乎所有的财富捐赠出去，用于拯救和改善世界各地人们的生活”。