SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced on Monday via social media a plan to gift one share of the aerospace company to every child in the United States. Musk described the proposal as "the first of many" gifts, though he did not provide specific details regarding the distribution process or a timeline for fulfillment.
The announcement followed a separate move by artificial intelligence firm Anthropic, which stated on Sunday it would commit 5% of its shares to a new public benefit fund. SpaceX is scheduled to report its quarterly earnings on Tuesday.
SpaceX shares closed at $146.03 on the Friday preceding the announcement. Musk is the largest shareholder in the company, holding a 10.5% stake. His stake included 4.8 billion shares when the company went public earlier this year. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Musk's current net worth is approximately $904 billion.
If the plan is executed, these millions of minors would become individual shareholders in a private aerospace firm that recently transitioned to a public company. The concrete day-to-day change for these families would involve the creation of brokerage or trust accounts to hold the equity, though Musk has not yet clarified the legal mechanism or the specific age requirements for recipients. The transfer could also result in tax obligations for recipients, depending on how the gift is structured under federal law.
The move marks a distribution of equity from a single individual to a broad segment of the U.S. population. Because Musk holds 4.8 billion shares, the distribution of 73 million shares would represent approximately 1.5% of his personal stake in the company. What happens next depends on the release of a formal distribution plan; currently, no effective date or registration deadline has been established by SpaceX or Musk.