ExclusiveElon Musk Wants to Give Every Kid a SpaceX Share

Imagine a child watching a rocket launch, the engines ignite, the rocket climbs. Somewhere beyond the screen is a company building that future. Now imagine that child owning a tiny piece of it. That is a promise Elon Musk has made, one of his SpaceX shares for every kid in America beginning next year. Welcome to News Planet, I'm your host Kathleen Lee. In a post on X on Monday, Musk wrote, quote, next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America. This will be the first of many. This is a pledge for 2027 dash not an announcement that children have already received shares. Musk did not specify an age cutoff, a distribution date or how families would receive the stock. So the story is significant. Here is where the headline comes from. census figures cited by CNBC put the number of American children under 18 at approximately 72 million. Multiply that by SpaceX's reported Friday closing price of $146.03, and the proposed distribution would be worth about $10.5 billion. That estimate assumes every child in that population qualifies. It also assumes that share price. The actual value would depend on eligibility, the number of shares transferred, and their price when the gift happens. It is stock, not a guaranteed cash payment. One share will not transform a family's finances overnight. But the idea is about ownership. A child would not simply watch a company develop technology. That child would hold a financial stake in its future. That could offer families a starting point for conversations about investing. What does a shareholder own? Why do prices change? And why can an investment gain value or lose it? The opportunity is meaningful precisely because it is not a promise of guaranteed wealth. Musk's announcement also comes as technology companies face growing questions about who benefits from the wealth they create. The pledge followed a separate announcement from AI company Anthropic, which committed shares to a public benefit fund. These are different approaches. Anthropic described a fund, Musk proposed distributing shares to children. Both bring the same underlying question into view. If technology creates extraordinary wealth, how widely should the opportunity to benefit from it be shared? A donation can contribute to that conversation. It cannot settle it. The missing details are not minor. Who counts as every kid in America? Would eligibility depend on age, residence, or citizenship? Would parents need to apply? Would shares sit in custodial accounts? Could recipients sell immediately? Or would restrictions apply? Reporting on the announcement says Musk had not explained those arrangements. Until those terms are published, families cannot know exactly what the pledge means for them. For now, millions of children have been promised a small stake in a very big ambition. Whether that becomes a lasting gift will depend on what happens after the announcement. A rocket launch begins with ignition. This promise becomes real when the shares reach the children. That's all we have today for News Planet. Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.