Elon Musk said Monday he will give every child in the United States one of his SpaceX shares next year. "This will be the first of many," he wrote on X on Monday, Oct. 19, 2026, without saying how the giveaway would work, CNBC and the Associated Press reported.
The pledge came after Anthropic said it would put 5% of its shares into a public-benefit fund. Musk replied that he recommends "giving the shares directly to the public," and that is what he would be doing, CNBC reported.
What the numbers look like
- Musk owns about 4.8 billion SpaceX shares, per an August SEC filing CNBC cited, or about 6.4 billion including unvested awards and options (48.4% beneficial stake).
- There were about 72 million children under 18 in the U.S. as of July 1, 2025, Census data CNBC cited.
- At SpaceX's Friday close of $146.03, one share for each of those children would be about $10.5 billion.
SpaceX began trading on Nasdaq as SPCX in June. Musk did not say which children would qualify, how shares would be held for minors, or whether the company would handle custody. CNBC said it had asked SpaceX for comment.
Why Tesla readers are watching
The post lands two days before SpaceX's Q3 report and three days before Tesla's. Barclays and others have floated a Tesla-SpaceX combination; see our Barclays merger note and Kalshi odds. A giveaway from Musk's personal SpaceX stake is not a Tesla corporate action, and neither company has filed anything describing it.
