An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Elon Musk has said he will give every child in America a stake in SpaceX, his $2 trillion aerospace and artificial intelligence company, as tech firms face intensifying scrutiny over their impact on society. "Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America," he wrote on X on Monday. "This will be the first of many."

SpaceX only began trading publicly in June (and after the biggest initial public offering in history). The company's shares were trading for about $146 when the market closed on Friday. Musk's proposal was thin on detail. It is not clear how those shares would be distributed to the tens of millions of American children or whether all of them would even be eligible. According to the United States Census Bureau, there are roughly 73 million people under the age of 18, making Musk's potential giveaway worth about $10.7 billion at SpaceX's current share price. The move came in response to Anthropic's announcement on Sunday that it will commit at least 5% of its shares to a "Public Benefit Fund" that will donate money to social causes. "I recommend giving the shares directly to the public," Musk said in a reply to Anthropic's announcement. "This is what I will be doing."

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