Billionaire Elon Musk recently shared a very surprising plan on his social media account. He announced his intention to give one share of his aerospace company, SpaceX, to every single child living in the United States starting next year. The move has quickly sparked massive interest online as people wonder how such a large public giveaway will work in reality and who will qualify to receive the space company stock.
The massive giveaway could cost billions of dollars to execute
According to recent census data, there are about 72 million children currently living in the US. Giving each one a share of the space company would add up to a value of around $10.5 billion based on recent trading prices.
While this sounds like a huge amount of money to most people, the world’s richest person has a net worth of over $908 billion. This immense wealth makes the plan very possible for him to pull off. Musk, who holds nearly half of the total equity in the company, shared that this upcoming drop is just the “first of many” similar moves he plans to make in the future.
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The idea sparked after another company pledged shares to charity
The sudden pledge actually started as a reaction to another tech company. Anthropic recently announced a plan to dedicate 5% of its shares to a public benefit fund. The SpaceX founder did not seem to agree with their method and suggested it is better to hand company shares directly to the public instead.
Right now, there are no details on how families can claim the stock or what the age limits will be. The company has not put out any official guidelines on the legal steps needed to transfer individual shares to millions of minors.
This bold promise could turn an entire generation into partial owners of the company building the Starship rocket. Whether the logistics of handing out millions of individual shares will prove too difficult remains to be seen. But the public announcement alone has already succeeded in shifting popular attention toward the future of space travel.
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