Musk promises to give every child in the US one SpaceX share

Elon Musk has promised to give every child in the US one SpaceX share next year, that is, in 2027, non-state Belarusian media report. The American entrepreneur made the statement on 19 October on the social network X.

According to reports in Telegram channels, his words came less than a day after Anthropic promised to transfer 5% of its shares to a public benefit fund.

At the current market price, one SpaceX share costs about $146. By the outlets' estimate, the total giveaway could reach $10.5–11 billion. Calculated as one share per American child at the closing price, it comes to roughly $10.66 billion.

For comparison: in June 2026, SpaceX raised $85.7 billion in its IPO. The additional share offering then drew demand four times higher than the supply.

Musk's statement, like Anthropic's announcement, came amid growing American anxiety over artificial intelligence. According to a new poll by the Associated Press and the NORC research center, 64% of US residents think AI is developing too fast. Another 27% call the pace acceptable, and 8% say it is too slow.

Last month, Anthropic head Dario Amodei, OpenAI head Sam Altman, Elon Musk and other prominent figures in the industry said AI development needs to slow down. They arrived at this position after one Anthropic researcher left the company, warning of serious threats the technology poses to humanity. A coordinated slowdown, as non-state Belarusian media note, is hampered by competition between companies inside the US and internationally, the pursuit of profit, and the resistance of President Donald Trump.

Anthropic itself is structured as a commercial organization with an eye to society: Dario Amodei and five other co-founders registered it as a public benefit corporation. This form provides for a balance between financial goals and public impact. At the same time, the company plans a large IPO as early as November, and in June it said it had confidentially filed an application with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Musk, meanwhile, has become the largest among the well-known donors in the current campaign ahead of the US midterm elections. Since July he has donated more than $276 million to keep the Republican majority in Congress.

SpaceX's own stock market history looks uneven. In June the company went public on Wall Street, and Musk became the first person in history with a fortune of a trillion dollars. A few days after the IPO the shares hit their peak price, but then fell by 35.3%, and Musk's fortune shrank.

Readers in Belarus following the market should keep these benchmarks in mind: a price of about $146 a share, the 35.3% fall from the peak after the June offering, and Anthropic's IPO in November. It is not yet known when exactly in 2027 the shares will be handed to children, or how the transfer will be organized.