
Tech billionaire Elon Musk announces he will give every child in the US a share of his space company SpaceX.
AI-generated summary
With his move, Musk is reacting to Anthropic's announcement that it would contribute five percent of its shares to a fund for the public good.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has announced that he will give every child in the US a share of the space company he runs SpaceX next year. This will be his first step of this kind "of many," Musk wrote on his online platform X. He remained silent about details about how the plan would be implemented.
According to recent census data, there are just over 70 million children under the age of 18 in the United States. At the current price of SpaceX shares, the share package for such a gift to them would be worth more than ten billion dollars. Musk's fortune is currently estimated by the financial service Bloomberg at a good $900 billion. It consists mainly of shares in SpaceX and the electric car manufacturer Tesla, which he also runs.
A trigger for Musk's move appears to be the announcement by the AI company Anthropic at the weekend that it would initially contribute five percent of its shares to a fund that is intended to benefit the public good. Musk then wrote to X that he recommended transferring shares directly to the public.
The SpaceX share initially took off after the IPO in June - but with prices below $150, it is now far from its highs beyond the $200 mark. There are still doubts about the current valuation of $1.9 trillion. The rocket business is currently relatively small, and the valuation is more of an advance from the stock market on the successes in artificial intelligence promised by Musk. SpaceX is well behind Anthropic and the ChatGPT developer OpenAI in this area.
Musk is known for his right-wing political views and is again supporting President Donald Trump's Republicans with several hundred million dollars in the current parliamentary election campaign. Trump recently promised $5,000 for all US citizens if the Republicans can maintain their majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives. Current polls suggest that the Democrats have a good chance of at least taking back the House of Representatives.

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Elon Musk has announced that he will give every child in the US a SpaceX share next year. Details regarding implementation remained open. The project follows a similar initiative by the AI company Anthropic and comes against the backdrop of close ties to Donald Trump.