SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) founder and CEO Elon Musk announced early Monday that every child in the United States will receive one of his shares in the Starship maker next year, a giveaway estimated at roughly $10.5 billion at Friday's closing price.

The pledge came within a day of Musk publicly criticizing the new charity fund that Anthropic announced ahead of its upcoming IPO.

"Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America. This will be the first of many."

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk), October 19, 2026, via X

Musk, who acquired Twitter in 2022 and rebranded the platform as X, made the announcement in a Monday morning post.

What Musk promised American children

In his early Monday morning X post, Musk promised to "give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America" next year, teasing that the pledge is "the first of many." However, the Tesla founder did not go into detail on how the giveaway would work or who qualifies for the "kid" designation. Both details — the mechanics of the giveaway and the definition of a qualifying child — remain open ahead of the planned 2027 distributionn
Per Census Bureau data, more than 72 million people in the US are under the age of 18. SpaceX's SPCX stock closed at $146.03 per unit on Friday. At that rate, the giveaway Musk promised for 2027 would be worth a little over $10.5 billion.

Before Musk's October commitment, SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell made a similar share pledge to 2 million Trump accounts, the federal children's investment accounts. That gift is worth close to $300 million at current prices. The nearly $11 billion Musk promised is nearly double the record-breaking gift Michael Dell made to federal Trump accounts. Measured against Shotwell's pledge, Musk's promised total of a little over $10.5 billion is more than thirty times the size.

Anthropic's public fund triggered Musk's SpaceX giveaway

Musk's share commitment came one day after Anthropic said it would commit at least 5% of its equity to a new public benefit fund, as Cryptopolitan reported. The entity could be worth $100 billion or more at the IPO valuation the company is rumored to be pursuing. Anthropic said it would set up a separate corporation to hold the shares and make donations.

Musk reacted directly to the news, writing, "I recommend giving the shares directly to the public." The SpaceX founder added, "This is what I will be doing."

The exchange sets out two distinct models for moving corporate wealth to the public: Anthropic's fund would pool shares in a dedicated corporation and give through donations, while Musk says he will place shares directly in individuals' hands.

Musk was not the only prominent critic of Anthropic's plan. Business Insider reported that Altimeter Capital CEO Brad Gerstner warned about "foundation wealth concentration" despite praising the "extraordinary gift," and added that he hoped a chunk of AI wealth would arrive as "a direct dividend."

NYU professor Gary Marcus was harsher, writing that "Anthropic is playing games here" and that the plan "reeks of desperation." Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights and Strategy asked why the company did not simply hand the money to citizens who "would know what to do with the money better than bureaucratic institutions."

Musk's jab is directed at a company his SpaceX does business with. As Cryptopolitan reported, Anthropic pays SpaceX $1.25 billion a month for compute through May 2029, a run rate near $15 billion a year. Musk earlier called the lab "clearly" the current leader in AI after walking back a 2025 dismissal.