President Donald Trump said Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) Chief Executive Elon Musk’s proposed 2027 share gifts would go through Trump Accounts, leaving transfer and tax details unresolved.
Musk pledged on Oct. 19 to give one of his shares to “every kid in America,” without defining who would qualify. Trump said the stock would reach children through Trump Accounts, identifying a proposed route but not a completed arrangement.
A calculation using the Census count and Oct. 16 closing price puts the pledge’s illustrative value at about $10.52 billion. It multiplied the Census Bureau’s count of 72,021,348 U.S. residents under 18 as of July 1, 2025, by the $146.03 share closing price on Oct. 16, 2026. Musk did not adopt that age or residency definition, and the price at any 2027 transfer is unknown.
Temporary Treasury and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rules effective Sept. 30 permit qualifying stock contributions to Trump Accounts for an approved class of beneficiaries. They require a government entity or qualifying tax-exempt organization to be the eligible donor, along with Treasury approval and an acceptance agreement. Trump’s statement does not establish those steps, and Musk has not detailed the arrangement.
The stock must also be publicly traded, issued by a domestic corporation and free of certain existing transfer restrictions. Musk’s SEC ownership filing includes shares held in trusts, restricted shares and options. He has not identified which holdings his pledge covers.
The IRS says a donor generally pays any federal gift tax. Its 2026 annual exclusion is $19,000 per recipient and takes account of that donor’s total gifts to the recipient during the year. A share valued at $146.03 would fall below that amount on its own if transferred as a completed gift qualifying for the exclusion. The pledge does not establish the donor under the proposed account route or the exclusion applicable in 2027. An IRS safe harbor for individual Trump Account contributions covers qualifying cash contributions, not stock.
For shares held outside Trump Accounts, recipients generally do not count a gift’s value as income when they receive it, IRS guidance says. Later income from the shares or a gain on sale could be taxable. Those rules do not settle the tax treatment of the account route Trump described.
Anthropic said Oct. 18 that its separate Anthropic Public Benefit Fund would hold 5% of company shares in a wholly owned limited liability company, subject to stockholder approval. The company said the fund could donate to nonprofits or explore direct distributions to specific populations, citing potential disruption to workers from artificial intelligence. Its board could add 2% for every 50% increase in company value above a baseline it has not specified.
Anthropic has not identified recipients, disclosed detailed governance or tax treatment, or specified whether the allocation would use existing or newly issued shares. It said it will release governance details and the triggers for any added stake in the coming months.
