Elon Musk posted on X early Monday, Oct. 19. Next year, he said, he'll give one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America. “This will be the first of many.” The Census Bureau counts about 73 million children under 18 in the U.S. SpaceX (SPCX) closed Monday at $147.96, up 1.3%. Do the math and the gift comes to roughly $10 billion in stock.
The shares would go into Trump Accounts, the government's new investment accounts for children, according to a post by President Trump on Monday afternoon. The Treasury auto-enrolled tens of millions of children. We covered the accounts on Oct. 7. What's new is the size of the gifts and the names behind them. Since last month, Treasury rules have let wealthy donors give stock to whole groups of children at once, picked by age or by where they live. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and her husband pledged one share each to roughly 2 million children this year. Michael and Susan Dell pledged $6.25 billion. Musk's pledge follows others from billionaires giving away some of the wealth piling up in the AI boom.
The catch for families
Two rules matter for parents. A family has no way to turn the gift down. And the share generally has to stay in the account for five years. Donors, the Treasury said, were keener to give if the children would own a particular company. A parent's own deposits work differently. They go into broad index funds. So a child's account could end up with a locked share of one rocket company sitting next to an index fund. Other details of Musk's plan weren't clear. SpaceX didn't respond to the Journal's Gareth Vipers.
For the donor, the paper notes the tax side. Like any gift of stock, these can come with tax breaks. The donor can skip capital-gains tax on the gain and may get a deduction against other income. Musk's net worth is more than $900 billion by a Journal analysis earlier this year, most of it from his SpaceX stake. In 2021 he gave roughly $5.7 billion of Tesla (TSLA) shares to charity. Tesla is held at weight in 13 of our books; nothing added.
Our read
Estate and Tax, with a Behavioral note. Nobody in our books owns SpaceX, and we aren't suggesting anyone buy it. This is a story about two kinds of families. For the one giving, a gift of stock that has gone up a lot works like a stock gift to a donor-advised fund. You can skip the capital-gains tax and may get a deduction. For the one receiving, a single stock you can't sell for five years is a concentration you didn't choose. One share is a small thing. The habit of knowing what sits in a child's account is a big one.
Here's the one thing in your own plan this touches. If you have a child or grandchild under 18, the Treasury may already have opened a Trump Account for them. This week, find out whether one exists, what's in it, and who's listed on it. Write it into the family's list of assets, next to the college savings plan and any custodial account. Note the five-year lock beside it. A gift you can't refuse still needs a line in your plan. If you'd like help fitting it in with the rest of a child's savings, bring it to your next review.