Musk Beats Anthropic on Giveaways

“Pop quiz: Artificial-intelligence giant Anthropic on Sunday announced it is creating a new fund to parcel out cash to existing nonprofits and maybe some individuals. Elon Musk on Monday said he wants to give every American child one share in SpaceX next year. Which giveaway do you think will do the most good?

 

No one can say for sure, but Mr. Musk is the better bet. While details of his plan remain vague, the idea appears to be to give every child a stake in the success of SpaceX. The idea is unrelated to, but is consistent with, the concept behind the new so-called Trump accounts that the federal government will seed with $1,000 for every child at birth. The difference is that Mr. Musk isn't committing someone else's money.

 

The Treasury Department is creating a mechanism for donors to feed shares of money directly into the Trump accounts. Michael and Susan Dell have committed $6.25 billion to fund $250 contributions to some 25 million Trump accounts. The money will be the recipient's to do with as he pleases, subject to the Trump account holding period.

 

Anthropic's plan superficially is more fleshed out than Mr. Musk's. The company will place 5% of its shares into a newly established limited liability corporation (LLC), a legal structure offering more flexibility than a traditional charity. The grandly named Anthropic Public Benefit Fund "might explore" donations to existing nonprofits, or "direct distributions to specific populations," the company says.

 

Left unanswered are questions such as "which existing nonprofits, to do what?" and "which 'specific populations'?" On the latter, one option is groups of people who may lose their jobs as a result of wider adoption of AI. But who will decide who qualifies, and how much each recipient receives? The idea smacks of paternalism, and political calculation as Anthropic sets itself up to buy off potentially noisy political opponents of AI.

 

Speaking of which, ample Silicon Valley experience counsels skepticism about Anthropic's plan to use some of its new fund for existing charities. Tech-fortune foundations are common, but giving away money for productive purposes is harder than it sounds.

 

Often foundations end up funneling cash into politically well-connected causes whose real-world benefits are hard to discern. Think of how the Gates Foundation has wasted grants to school systems controlled by teachers unions. This is in contrast to the donations by Jeff Yass, John Walton and others for scholarships to individual students to schools of their choice that can change their life prospects.

 

At the current SpaceX stock price of about $147 and America's youth population of some 73 million, Mr. Musk's gift would be valued at about $10 billion. He'd cede that portion of the voting control of his company to these new young shareholders.

 

Mr. Musk is leaning into capitalism by giving his recipients ownership, and choice. Credit him for a magnificent charitable troll of Silicon Valley's trendy "effective altruism" that rarely turns out to be either.” [1]

 

1. Musk Beats Anthropic on Giveaways. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 20 Oct 2026: A18.