Written by: Xiaobing, Shenchao TechFlow
In 2026, tech billionaires are experiencing a new kind of anxiety: they have created the most powerful technology in human history, which is making them richer at an unprecedented rate while also replacing ordinary people's jobs at an unprecedented rate.
Public discontent is accumulating. Polls show that 39% of Americans believe AI does more harm than good, 8 percentage points higher than in 2025. In this atmosphere, "giving money away" has shifted from charity to a survival strategy.
On October 19, Musk announced loudly on X: "Next year, I will give one share of my SpaceX holdings to every child in America. This is just the first step."
SpaceX closed at $146.03 last Friday. The U.S. population under 18 is about 72 million. Multiply the two numbers, and the price tag of this tweet comes out: about $10.5 billion.
In any frame of reference, this is the ceiling for personal share gifts in human history, but the real explosive power of this tweet lies in its timeline.
A narrative counterattack completed within 24 hours
On October 18, the day before Musk's post, Anthropic announced that it would inject at least 5% of the company's shares into a newly established "Public Benefit Fund." If the company's valuation grows by 50% each time, the board can add another 2%. Based on Anthropic's current valuation, the first commitment is worth about $48 billion. The funds will flow to nonprofit organizations, groups affected by AI in employment, and social programs to mitigate technological unemployment.
Musk responded on X that day: "I suggest giving the shares directly to the public."
Twenty-four hours later, he fulfilled that statement with SpaceX shares.
This is a collision between two philosophies of AI survival. Anthropic takes the institutional path: setting up a fund, screening beneficiaries, and letting the board decide the pace of distribution. Musk's logic is to skip all intermediaries and stuff shares directly into every child's account.
While responding to Anthropic, he is also responding to a deeper question: when AI begins to replace human labor on a large scale, in what way should tech companies "pay taxes" to society?
Trump Accounts: a piece of financial infrastructure just over 100 days old
Musk said "give every child one share," but children cannot directly hold stocks. The destination of these 72 million SpaceX shares points to a piece of financial infrastructure launched only this year: Trump Accounts.
The story starts with Brad Gerstner. This founder of Altimeter Capital began pushing a legislative proposal called the "Invest America Act" on Capitol Hill in 2024. The core idea is extremely simple: the federal government opens an investment account for every newborn, injects $1,000 in seed funding, invests it in an S&P 500 index fund, and lets compounding replace welfare.
Gerstner found Senator Ted Cruz. Cruz packaged the proposal into the Republican "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" in 2025. After the bill passed, the "Trump Account" was officially born, with the official number 530A.
The rules are clear: American children born between 2025 and 2028 automatically receive a $1,000 initial deposit from the Treasury, invested in a low-fee U.S. equity index fund; up to $5,000 can be deposited additionally each year; partial withdrawals are allowed at 18, and full unlocking at 35; growth is tax-free, and withdrawals are taxed at ordinary income rates.
On July 4, 2026, the accounts were officially launched. Bank of New York Mellon serves as financial agent, and Robinhood provides the mobile operating interface. By October, more than 70 million accounts had been activated.
In September, the IRS issued a key supplementary rule: Trump Accounts can accept donations of individual stocks.
This rule cleared the last pipeline obstacle between Musk's holdings and the 72 million accounts.
An arms race of billionaires courting Trump
Musk is not the first tech tycoon to inject funds into Trump Accounts.
In July, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and her husband announced that they would donate personally held SpaceX shares into Trump Accounts, covering more than 2 million children from low-income families, worth about $320 million.
Computer giant Dell's chairman Michael Dell and his wife Susan Dell went even bigger, injecting $6.25 billion in cash directly. Trump called Dell "an amazing person."
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley announced that they would match the federal $1,000 deposit for Trump Accounts for employees' children. BlackRock, Bank of America, and JPMorgan followed. Uber, Comcast, Intel, and Micron joined one after another.
Then on October 18, Anthropic threw out a $48 billion public benefit fund.
Twenty-four hours later, Musk offered $10.5 billion in SpaceX shares.
Brad Gerstner later called this series of donations "the largest philanthropic action in human history."
Every participant knows the underlying driver of this arms race: when AI begins to replace white-collar jobs on a large scale, tech companies need a narrative to prove that the wealth they create is not all a zero-sum game. "Making every child a shareholder" is currently the most communicable narrative.
From a trader's perspective, this "donation" costs Musk almost nothing.
He holds about 4.8 billion SpaceX shares. An SEC filing in August showed that, including unvested options and awards, he controls about 6.4 billion shares, or 48.4% of SpaceX's total shares. The 72 million shares are only 1.5% of that. SpaceX's market value has exceeded $2 trillion, Musk's personal net worth is about $904 billion, and $10.5 billion is just a fraction.
The returns he gets are far richer than the book numbers: repair of his public image, recapturing narrative power in the AI philanthropy race, and rebinding his relationship with Trump.
And the rebinding of his relationship with Trump is especially delicate. Their relationship has undergone dramatic swings over the past year. He entered the White House as a special government employee at DOGE, then quietly exited after electric vehicle subsidies were cut. Trump called this disagreement a "small dispute," but the two have not spoken since SpaceX's June listing, which raised about $75 billion and briefly made Musk the first trillionaire in human history. Trump only sent a congratulatory letter.
Semafor reported at the end of June that the Trump administration had discussed with SpaceX a donation of shares to Trump Accounts. In a CNBC interview in July, when Trump was asked whether Musk would donate SpaceX shares, he said: "I think he will."
A social experiment
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent once said something worth chewing over repeatedly: Trump Accounts are "the back door to privatizing Social Security."
Different positions praise and criticize this differently, and behind it points to a deeper question: in the AI era, should ordinary people's social security be capitalized?
What supporters see is this: even with only $1,000 in seed funding, based on the S&P 500's historical annualized return, it could grow to tens of thousands of dollars after 30 years. If corporate-donated shares are added on top (one SpaceX share is worth $146 today; who can predict what it will be worth in 2060), every child could have a considerable starter fund at 35. This is replacing the welfare mechanism with market mechanisms, and replacing transfer payments with asset appreciation.
What critics worry about is this: responsibility for the social safety net is shifting from the government to the market and entrepreneurs' goodwill. Today Musk is in a good mood and donates $10.5 billion; what about tomorrow? What about a market crash? There is no law forcing companies to keep injecting funds. Tying children's economic future to the share price of SpaceX or the S&P 500 means they passively become passengers in the capital market at birth.OpenAI's Sam Altman was the first to propose the idea of having AI companies transfer equity to the government. The roots of this idea can be traced back to his 2020 essay "Moore's Law for Everything": **AI will drive the cost of goods and services toward zero, but wealth will concentrate among a few at an unprecedented rate.** His solution was to tax corporate equity and land, using the tax revenue to pay every adult American citizen $13,500 per year—this is the Silicon Valley version of UBI (Universal Basic Income).
But UBI has always been a sensitive term in America's political spectrum. Democratic candidate Andrew Yang brought it into the spotlight during the 2020 election, and also pinned it with the label of "left-wing utopia." A Republican-controlled Congress could never pass a bill that directly hands out money.
The cleverness of Gerstner and Cruz lies in this: they packaged the core of UBI (letting every citizen share the fruits of economic growth) into a shell that Republicans can accept. Trump Accounts give not cash, but equity; not welfare, but investment; not a government safety net, but capital market appreciation.
Bessent favors filling these accounts with equity in AI companies; Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick advocates establishing a sovereign wealth fund-style architecture. In the end, Bessent's approach prevailed, but the contest between the two lines of thinking has never truly ended.
They point to the same question: when a handful of companies and individuals control the most powerful technology in human history and thereby accumulate unprecedented wealth, what mechanism should they use to share it with society?
Anthropic and Musk have given different answers, and Trump Accounts happen to be the intersection—a hybrid built by the federal government, filled by private capital, and operated by fintech companies like Robinhood, a financial instrument that realizes a left-wing dream in right-wing language.
70 million accounts are becoming the testing ground for this experiment. In 2027, when Musk's 72 million SpaceX shares actually land in these accounts, a generation of American children will become shareholders of the world's largest private space company at birth.
From Altman's essay to Yang's campaign platform, from Cruz's bill to Musk's tweets, the concept of UBI took six years, changed its skin three times, and finally landed quietly in a form no one anticipated.
This sounds like the opening of a science fiction novel, but the script of reality will be more absurd than fiction in the AI era.