About 73 million children under 18 live in the US, according to US Census Bureau data. At Friday’s closing price of $146.03, the pledge would be worth about $10.7bn. President Donald Trump thanked Musk on his Truth Social platform, and claimed the shares would be given to children “through TRUMP ACCOUNTS”, the tax-friendly investment accounts for children created under his signature tax and spending law last year.
The pledge comes two weeks before the November 3 midterm elections. Musk is the biggest known donor in the run-up to those elections, having given more than $276m to Republican groups since July. Musk has not said which children will qualify, when the shares will be handed over, or how.
So how might the giveaway work, and who stands to gain? SpaceX, the world’s seventh-largest company, began trading on the Nasdaq in June at an initial public offering price of $135 per share. That price has been volatile.
SpaceX shares have fallen 35.3 percent since peaking days after the listing. The shares are currently trading at around $146 a share. Every $1 move in the share price will change the gift’s value by about $73m.
Musk owns 4.8 billion shares in SpaceX outright, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in August. Including unvested awards and stock options, his stake rises to about 6.4 billion shares, or 48.4 percent of the company. Giving away 73 million shares would reduce his outright holding by about 1.5 percent, barely affecting his control of the company.
That’s because his voting power, which is currently about 82 percent because SpaceX has two classes of shares, would fall by only 0.1 percentage points, according to a Bloomberg Opinion calculation. It would be the largest single gift linked to Trump accounts so far. Trump said the shares would be held in Trump accounts, and Musk thanked Brad Gerstner, the tech investor behind the accounts, for “helping enable this”.
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