Musk says he'll give some SpaceX shares to public after Anthropic announces 'public benefit' fund

NEW YORK: Billionaire Elon Musk on Monday pledged one share of his company SpaceX to “every kid in America.”

The offer arrived a day after artificial intelligence company Anthropic announced in a social media post that it will commit 5 per cent 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.”

SpaceX's stock closed at USD 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.

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 US 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.