Anthropic Gives 5% of Itself to the Public. Musk Answers by Giving Away SpaceX Shares
In brief
- Anthropic plans to give 5% of its shares to a new Public Benefit Fund, if shareholders approve. The company says about 20% of its shares will go toward helping the public once promises from its co-founders and employees are included.
- Elon Musk responded by promising to give one SpaceX share to every child in the United States next year. At current prices, the gift would be worth more than $10 billion.
- The fund follows a draft AI safety law that Anthropic presented to lawmakers days earlier. The proposed law would let the government stop the release of AI models that could kill or seriously injure more than 50 people or cause more than $1 billion in damage.
Anthropic, the company that makes the Claude chatbot, said on Sunday that it will give 5% of its shares to a new Public Benefit Fund. On Monday, Elon Musk responded by promising to give one SpaceX share to every child in the United States next year.
“The Anthropic Public Benefit Fund will have increased flexibility and scale, enabling us to pursue our mission in new ways: for example, we might explore large donations to traditional nonprofits or direct distributions to specific populations,” Anthropic said. The company has already set aside $200 million to study this idea.
Many Americans are worried that AI is advancing too quickly. An AP-NORC poll in late September found that 64% of U.S. adults think the technology is developing too fast, while 8% think it is developing too slowly.
Anthropic is preparing to go public, which means selling its shares on the stock market. This could happen as soon as November, at a reported company value of about $2 trillion. At that price, 5% of the company would be worth about $100 billion on paper. This is the estimated value of the shares, not cash held in a bank account.
The fund will be a limited liability company (LLC) fully owned by Anthropic, rather than a nonprofit organization. Anthropic says this setup will let it choose between different ways of giving money. Each time the company's value rises by 50% above a starting value that has not been revealed, the board can add another 2% of the company's shares to the fund. The fund cannot use any of its shares for lobbying or political donations.
Anthropic's co-founders have promised to donate 80% of their ownership in the company. The company also has a program that matches donations made by employees. Anthropic says that, together, these promises mean roughly 20% of its shares will support the public good. The company has not explained how the fund will be taxed or what information it will share with the public, as a traditional charity must do.
Musk, who rarely lets someone else have all the attention, called for what he described as Universal High Income, rather than Universal Basic Income. Writing on X, he said he would give one of his SpaceX shares to every child in America. “This will be the first of many,” he added.
His first response to Anthropic came on Sunday night. He suggested that the company should “give the shares directly to the public” instead of putting them into a fund. Early Monday, less than a day after Anthropic's announcement, he made his promise to give shares to children.
Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America.
This will be the first of many.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2026
There are about 72 million children in the United States, so Musk's promise would be worth around $10.5 billion, based on a SpaceX share price of about $147. That amount equals just over 1% of the 6.42 billion shares Musk owned as of June 30, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It is also about 1% of his estimated $908.5 billion fortune, which has passed $1 trillion several times this year.
The U.S. Treasury Department recently allowed companies and charities to donate individual company shares to Trump Accounts. These are savings accounts for children that receive tax benefits, and donated shares are generally kept in the accounts for five years. Musk is likely planning to use this option instead of creating a fund like Anthropic's. His reply on X more or less confirmed this.
Thanks for helping enable this
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2026
Anthropic's plan comes from a company whose CEO wrote in January that “we are considerably closer to real danger in 2026.” The company often warns about the dangers AI could pose, while also quickly releasing some of the most powerful AI models available.
In April, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman accused Anthropic of using fear-based marketing to promote Claude Mythos. Now, Anthropic is giving away part of its ownership before its planned stock market debut.
Two days before announcing the fund, Anthropic had quietly presented lawmakers with its own draft law on AI safety. The proposal would let the government stop the release of an AI model if there were a clear and immediate risk that it could kill or seriously injure more than 50 people or cause over $1 billion in damage. Such harm could come from a biological weapon, an AI system escaping human control, or a cyberattack.
→The proposed ban would need to go through the Commerce Department and receive a federal court order. Developers would also have to publish safety plans and reports explaining how their new AI models work and what risks they pose. Anthropic says the bill is based on its Advanced AI Framework, which it has been presenting to lawmakers since June. That was the month its CEO, Dario Amodei, called for legally binding rules for frontier models, meaning the most powerful AI systems.
Anthropic's critics include investor and former White House AI adviser David Sacks. In response to the company's promise, he wrote in a post on X: “You’ve put 20% of your equity in an LCC. Whether it serves the public good remains to be seen.”
Anthropic says it will publish details about how the fund will be managed and the company value levels that will trigger further donations in the coming months. Its stock market debut could happen as soon as November.
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