The first stock you own probably won’t make you rich. What it changes is how you see money, because you stop being only a customer and start being an owner.
That idea drives Trump Accounts, the tax-advantaged investment accounts for children that opened for contributions on July 4. Families and others can add up to $5,000 a year, and babies born from 2025 through 2028 can get a one-time $1,000 Treasury deposit, according to the IRS.
Wealthy backers have piled in since. Michael and Susan Dell committed $6.25 billion, or $250 each, for the first 25 million qualifying children who sign up. Wall Street firms joined too, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley adding Trump Account perks for employees.
Then SpaceX’s own No. 2 raised the stakes. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and her husband would gift one SpaceX share to a Trump Account for each of more than 2 million children between the ages of 11 and 17 in lower-income areas, Shotwell posted on X.
Now the man who controls SpaceX says he will go much bigger. Elon Musk posted on X on Oct. 19 that next year he will give one of his own SpaceX (SPCX) shares to every kid in America.
“This will be the first of many,” Musk wrote.
Courtney Hale / Getty Images
Elon Musk’s stock pledge carries a $10.7 billion price tag
The U.S. counted 73.1 million people under 18 in the 2020 census, according to USAFacts. At SpaceX’s Oct. 16 closing price of $146.03, one share per child comes to about $10.7 billion.
That is a staggering gift by normal standards, and a sliver of Musk’s holdings. He controlled about 6.42 billion SpaceX shares as of June 30, according to a regulatory filing. By my analysis, 73 million shares would be roughly 1.1 percent of that stake.
Related: 2 million kids just got a share of SpaceX stock
Musk has made outsized stock gifts before. He once donated more than $5 billion of Tesla stock to charity, TheStreet reported at the time.
When I covered Shotwell’s gift in July, the obvious next question was whether her boss would follow. “Well, I think he will do that,” President Donald Trump said when CNBC’s Joe Kernen asked whether Musk would donate stock to Trump Accounts.
Open questions hang over the Trump Accounts handoff
Musk’s post ran just two sentences. It didn’t say which kids qualify, how the shares would be delivered or whether they would land in Trump Accounts at all.
More on Trump Accounts:
- Bessent makes bold case for Trump Accounts to build wealth
- Trump Accounts could deepen the wealth divide
- IRS CEO has good news for all Americans on Trump Accounts
Eligibility is the first open question. Trump Accounts are open to any child under 18 with a Social Security number, but Musk’s “every kid in America” could mean something broader or narrower than that.
Timing is the second. Musk’s own SpaceX shares remain locked up until June 2027, Tesla North reported on Oct. 16. That leaves roughly half of next year before his stake is free to move, unless the lockup terms allow for gifts.
The account itself is the third. Until the year a child turns 18, Trump Account money must sit in mutual funds or exchange-traded funds that track the S&P 500 or another index of mostly U.S. stocks, the IRS says.
Musk hasn’t said how a single-company share would fit that rule, or whether his gift would go somewhere else.
Shotwell’s July gift offers the closest preview of how this could play out:
- Each of more than 2 million children got one share, held until they turn 18, according to Brad Gerstner, the Altimeter Capital founder behind the Invest America push.
- SpaceX closed at $160.42 on July 6, the day the gift was announced, Yahoo Finance reported.
- At the Oct. 16 close of $146.03, each of those shares is worth about $14.39 less, a paper loss near nine percent, based on closing prices from Google Finance.
- Analysts tracked by Google Finance put the average SpaceX price target at $217.50, with a low of $75 and a high of $450.
How a single share could grow for your child
Put the gift next to the rest of a Trump Account. A $146 share equals about 15 percent of the $1,000 newborn seed and about three percent of the $5,000 yearly contribution cap.
Time is where it gets interesting. If that share grew 7% per year for 18 years, it would be worth about $494. At 10 percent a year, it would be worth about $812.
Those are illustrations, not forecasts. SpaceX has traded between $104.83 and $225.64 over the past year, according to The Motley Fool, which means one share has swung by more than $120 in a matter of months.
Taxes matter, too. Gifted stock generally keeps the giver’s original cost basis under IRS Publication 551, so if that cost was low, nearly the whole sale price can count as taxable gain when a child sells in a regular custodial account. Inside a Trump Account, withdrawals are taxed as income at the child’s rate, Fidelity notes.
There is also an irony here. “Don’t worry about squirreling money away for retirement in 10 or 20 years,” Musk said on the Moonshots with Peter Diamandis podcast in January, Fortune reported.
Trump Accounts become traditional individual retirement accounts once a child turns 18, so his gift could end up in exactly the kind of account he told adults to stop worrying about.
I’d treat Musk’s share as a bonus on top of your plan. The steady contributions you make yourself will do most of the work over 18 years, whatever SpaceX stock does.
SpaceX earnings land before the gift does
The next test comes fast. SpaceX will post third-quarter results after the market closes on Oct. 20 and host a webcast at 4:30 p.m. ET, according to a release from SpaceX.
Its first public report showed $7.8 billion in second-quarter revenue, up 92 percent from a year earlier, and a $541 million net loss. A strong third quarter could lift the value of Musk’s gift before it ever arrives, and a weak one could shrink it.
For families, the questions that matter are practical: who qualifies, where the share lands and when it arrives. Until Musk answers them, plan as if the share isn’t coming and count it as upside if it does.
About 73 million kids could soon own a sliver of a rocket company. What that sliver is worth at 18 will depend on what gets built beside it.
Related: Goldman Sachs revamps SpaceX stock estimates before crucial earnings test
