Elon Musk pledges a share of his SpaceX company to 'every kid in America'

Billionaire Elon Musk on Monday pledged to give one share of his company SpaceX to "every kid in America" next year.

The offer arrived a day after artificial intelligence company Anthropic announced in a social media post that it will commit 5% of its shares to a new "public benefit" fund.

In a response to that Sunday post, Musk wrote, "I recommend giving the shares directly to the public."


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Shares of SpaceX, which will report its quarterly earnings on Tuesday, closed at $146.03 on Friday.

Anthropic said Sunday that the shares it is committing will go to the Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, a new entity within the company. The fund's worth will potentially increase as the shares grow in value.

Musk did not provide further details on how his share pledge will be carried out, but did add in his post that "This will be the first of many."

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The announcements by Musk and Anthropic arrive as Americans grow increasingly wary of AI. A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that most Americans, 64%, think AI is developing "too fast," while 27% say its development has been "about right" and only 8% say it's moving "too slow."

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and the company's five other cofounders established Anthropic as a public benefit corporation, a designation that for-profit companies select to balance financial goals and social impact.

Anthropic is planning a massive initial public offering as soon as November. In June the company said that it had submitted a confidential filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for its proposed IPO.

That same month, Musk's SpaceX made its Wall Street debut as a publicly traded company and made Musk the world's first trillionaire.