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Elon Musk on Monday pledged to give one of his own SpaceX shares to “every kid in America” next year.
The offer came a day after artificial intelligence company Anthropic announced in a social media post that it would commit 5% of its shares to a new “public benefit” fund, subject to shareholder approval.
In a response to that Sunday post, Musk wrote, “I recommend giving the shares directly to the public.”
Shares of SpaceX, which will report its quarterly earnings on Tuesday, closed at $146.03 (€130.09) on Friday.
With approximately 73 million children under the age of 18 in the United States, that would put the value of Musk’s pledge at about $10.66 billion (€9.5 billion), based on Friday’s closing price.
Anthropic said Sunday that the shares it is committing would go to the Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, a new entity wholly owned by the company. The fund’s value could rise if the shares increase in value.
Musk did not provide further details on how his share pledge would be carried out, but added in his post that “This will be the first of many.”
The announcements by Musk and Anthropic come as Americans grow increasingly wary of AI. A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 64% of Americans think AI is developing “too fast,” while 27% say its development has been “about right” and only 8% say it’s moving “too slow.”
Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Musk and other prominent industry leaders said last month that AI’s development needs to slow down. The consensus came after an Anthropic researcher resigned with a dire warning about the threats the technology poses to humanity. But obstacles including domestic and global competition, the pursuit of profit and pushback from President Donald Trump all stand in the way of a coordinated effort to slow AI’s development.
Meanwhile, Musk has quietly become the biggest known donor in this year’s US midterm elections, giving more than $276 million (€246 million) since July to try to preserve Republican majorities in Congress.
Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei and the company’s five other co-founders established Anthropic as a public benefit corporation, a designation that for-profit companies can choose to balance financial goals and social impact.
Anthropic is planning a major initial public offering (IPO) as soon as November. In June, the company said that it had submitted a confidential filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for its proposed IPO.
That same month, Musk’s SpaceX made its Wall Street debut and made Musk the world’s first trillionaire. However, SpaceX shares have fallen 35.3% since peaking days after the IPO, reducing Musk’s fortune.
