Elon Musk has promised to give one SpaceX share to every child in the United States next year, a gift that could be worth more than $10bn. The world’s richest man announced the plan on X on Monday, writing that “This will be the first of many.”
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 total roughly $10.7bn. Musk has not yet said which children will qualify, when the shares will be transferred, or how the process will work.
How the SpaceX share giveaway could work
President Donald Trump thanked Musk on his Truth Social platform and said the shares would reach children through TRUMP ACCOUNTS. These are tax-friendly investment accounts for children that were created under the tax and spending law Trump signed last year. The White House said nearly 70 million of these accounts have been opened, one for each child under 18 with a Social Security number.
SpaceX, which ranks as the world’s seventh-largest company, started trading on the Nasdaq in June at an initial offering price of $135 a share. The stock has been volatile since then, and it has fallen 35.3 percent from the peak it reached days after the listing. It currently trades at around $146, and every $1 change in the share price shifts the gift’s value by about $73m.
Under Treasury rules published on September 30, donors can now give individual company stock to children through these accounts. Families and friends who make regular contributions are limited to low-risk index funds. Families cannot refuse shares on a child’s behalf, and generally cannot sell them for five years, or until the end of the year a child turns 17 if that comes sooner. The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk cannot sell or trade most of his own SpaceX shares until June 2027.
Musk’s stake and the tax angle
A filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in August showed that Musk owns 4.8 billion SpaceX shares outright. 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.
According to a Bloomberg Opinion calculation, his voting power, currently about 82 percent because SpaceX has two classes of shares, would fall by only 0.1 percentage points. The gift would also be the largest single one linked to Trump accounts so far. The pledge may also benefit Musk financially. Donors who give appreciated stock to charity typically avoid capital gains tax and can usually claim a deduction, according to a report by a US business broadcaster.
Musk paid very little for his SpaceX shares as the company’s founder. Selling $10.7bn of them, however, could create a tax bill of up to about $2.5bn. Will McBride, chief economist at the Tax Foundation, described this kind of move as “a popular practice for particularly high-income taxpayers that would otherwise be paying a high rate,” speaking to the broadcaster in May.
Political timing and ethical questions
The pledge comes two weeks before the November 3 midterm elections, which will determine control of both houses of Congress. All House seats and one-third of the Senate are up for re-election. Musk has been the biggest known donor ahead of the vote, giving more than $276m to Republican groups since July.
Trump’s approval rating has fallen to a record low of 33 percent in a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, and many political observers expect Republicans to lose seats to the Democrats. Musk campaigned with Trump in 2024 and led the president’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, which aimed to shrink the federal workforce. The accounts carry the president’s name, and Trump has closely tied himself to the gift, saying the pledge was “exactly what was envisioned when we created TRUMP ACCOUNTS.”
Mitchell Downey, an economist at Stockholm University’s Institute for International Economic Studies who studies political influence in the US, said he does not think the pledge raises legal concerns. “Individuals are allowed to spend their money in support of a politician,” he said. He added that the law is broken only when spending is not publicly reported or forms part of an explicit, documented quid-pro-quo.
Downey said the pledge does raise ethical questions, though not ones unique to Musk. Those concerns relate to “the outsized role that external donors play in US elections,” he said, comparing them to someone who spends heavily on television advertising for a candidate. He also described the precedent as “hard to assess,” noting that Musk is “doing something that involves more money than other very rich people have done.”
Downey pointed to the Gates Foundation’s spending over the past three decades as a different kind of gift to the public. Unlike Musk’s proposal, he said, the foundation directs its funding at health crises in countries in Africa and South Asia rather than at voters in the US. Gates has pledged to give away virtually all of his wealth through the foundation over the next 20 years to save and improve lives around the world.
