Elon Musk vows to give a share of SpaceX stock to every US child
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attends the Golden Age of American Innovation Summit at the Institute of Peace on Oct. 8, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, on Monday vowed to give every child in the United States a share of stock in aerospace giant SpaceX.
The company, which Musk leads as founder and CEO, boasts a valuation of nearly $2 trillion, with Musk the largest individual shareholder. A share of SpaceX was worth about $150 as of Monday morning.
“Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America. This will be the first of many,” Musk said in a post on X.
Musk did not provide additional details about how or when the shares would be distributed or what the recipient age cutoff may be.
The latest U.S. Census data estimated about 73 million people in the U.S. under age 18. Using that figure and given the company’s share price on the day of Musk’s announcement, the giveaway would total nearly $11 billion.
Musk’s net worth stands at $908.5 billion, the most recent Fortune data shows, meaning the donation would amount to about 1.2% of his wealth.
SpaceX builds and operates spacecraft, including thousands of satellites deployed in support of its Starlink satellite internet service. The company also oversees xAI, which offers a chatbot in competition with the likes of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude.
The pledge from Musk arrived amid scrutiny from some policymakers, investors and the general public about the potential impact of AI on the labor market and wider economy.
Musk’s announcement is not the only stated public benefit outreach from a business leader or firm in the AI sector.
On Sunday, Anthropic announced the formation of what they said was a “Public Benefit Fund” made up of 5% of the company’s shares. The portion of the company’s shares held by the fund will grow in the event of an increase in the company’s value, Anthropic said.
An additional 2% of shares will be added at the board’s discretion for every 50% increase in the company’s value above a set baseline, Anthropic said. The fund is subject to shareholder approval, according to the announcement.
While stating that Anthropic is a “public benefit corporation” with “most of our work in pursuit of our mission [taking] place inside the company,” the announcement said the Public Benefit Fund “will have increased flexibility and scale, enabling us to pursue our mission in new ways: for example, we might explore large donations to traditional nonprofits or direct distributions to specific populations.”
“AI may generate enormous economic value, but it could also cause instability for many workers,” the company’s announcement further said. “Anthropic has already committed $200 million to studying and addressing this issue, but given the pace of AI progress, bolder approaches may be needed. The Fund will have the versatility to pursue them.”
For its part, rival firm OpenAI operates what it describes as a philanthropic organization, called the OpenAI Foundation.
Over a year-long period, the group plans to invest $1 billion in “life sciences and curing diseases, jobs and economic impact, AI resilience, and community programs,” Bret Taylor, chair of the board of directors of the OpenAI Foundation, said in March.
A surge in AI spending has helped boost the U.S. economy in recent quarters, but some economists have warned the industry may increase inflation and harm job prospects for some workers.
A series of autonomous AI hacks in recent months, meanwhile, has elicited concern from some industry insiders and public figures about severe risks the technology could pose for key institutions with digital systems, including commandeering vital infrastructure and even potentially threatening humanity itself.
Analysts who previously spoke to ABC News disagreed sharply about the likelihood of an AI-induced calamity. Some said such an outcome is likely if the industry fails to impose adequate safeguards, while others characterized it as vague and far-fetched.
In this June 27, 2016 file photo Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve and president and founder of Greenspan Associates, speaks during a Bloomberg Television interview in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images, FILE)
(NEW YORK) — Alan Greenspan, the longtime chairman of the Federal Reserve, has died, his wife confirmed. He was 100 years old.
“Alan passed away at our home this morning at the age of 100 from complications of Parkinson’s Disease,” Andrea Mitchell, his wife and a chief correspondent at NBC News, said in a statement published by the network on Monday.
The economist is remembered for leading the American central bank amid periods of historic U.S. economic expansion, while critics have also said his policies contributed to and exacerbated the mortgage crisis and financial crash of 2008.
Greenspan, a libertarian Republican, became the 13th chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System two months before the stock market crash on Oct. 19,1987, known as Black Monday. He was credited with moving quickly to alleviate investors’ fears after the crash and was instrumental in ensuring the Federal Reserve made plenty of money available to alleviate the impact on financial markets. Stocks quickly rebounded.
He was appointed Fed chair by four different presidents during his career, first by Ronald Reagan in 1987. Greenspan continued to serve as Fed chairman under presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He steered the U.S. economy through the economic boom in the 1990s, the dotcom bubble, and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. His final term as chair ended on Jan. 31, 2006.
Under his leadership, the Fed fostered a distaste for regulation and promoted very low interest rates in the early 2000s — two phenomena critics say encouraged a bubble in housing prices that eventually burst with disastrous effects on the global economy.
During his tenure, and before the financial crisis began, the nation experienced one of the longest periods of economic growth in its history.
A decorated economist, first inspired by music
Greenspan was born on March 6, 1926, in New York City, the only child of Herbert Greenspan, a stockbroker, and Rose Goldsmith Greenspan, a retail worker. His parents divorced when he was 4 years old, and he was raised mainly by his mother and his grandparents.
An aspiring musician, Greenspan attended Juilliard for a year and played saxophone and clarinet before dropping out and enrolling at New York University. He went on to gain his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in economics from New York University. He also engaged in some advanced graduate work at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under the influential economist Arthur Burns.
Though short-lived, his music career was an influential portion of Greenspan’s life, and he considered the move into economics a logical progression. He saw the organization of economic data into sound fiscal modeling as analogous to the organization of musical notes into tunes, according to Greenspan biographer Justin Martin in his book, “Greenspan: The Man Behind Money.”
“I get the same kind of joy from solving a hard mathematical problem as I do from hearing a Haydn quartet,” Greenspan once told The New York Times Magazine.
Greenspan taught economics at NYU between 1953 and 1955 and then founded the economic consulting firm Townsend & Greenspan, where he served as chairman and president from 1954 to 1974. He returned to the firm in 1977 and stayed until 1987.
President Richard Nixon nominated Greenspan to chair the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1974, the first of many government economic positions he would hold. Nixon resigned as president hours after Greenspan was nominated, but he continued to serve under President Gerald Ford. Greenspan also served as a member of President Ronald Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board and was a consultant to the Congressional Budget Office.
In the private sector, Greenspan served as corporate director for many companies, including Alcoa, General Foods and J.P. Morgan & Co. He also served as a member of Time magazine’s Board of Economists and a senior adviser to the Brookings Panel on Economic Activity.
In 2002, Greenspan received an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his contribution to global economic stability. In 2005, President George W. Bush presented Greenspan with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
He held the position of Fed chairman from the time Reagan appointed him in 1987 until 2006, serving an unprecedented five terms under four presidents before being succeeded by Ben Bernanke.
Greenspan is credited by many with facilitating the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. One day after the Black Monday stock crash, Greenspan affirmed the Fed’s “readiness to serve as a source of liquidity to support the economic and financial system” and the central bank moved to encourage banks to lend on their normal terms. Unlike prior financial crises, the events of Black Monday notably were not followed by an economic recession or a banking crisis and less than two years later, the U.S. stock market surpassed its pre-crash highs.
During his tenure, Greenspan developed a reputation for being a consensus-builder and for his strong anti-inflation stance, focusing more on controlling prices than on promoting full employment. He led the Federal Reserve through several events with major economic consequences, including two U.S. recessions, the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
‘How could we have possibly got it so wrong?’
Starting in June 2003, the Federal Reserve set the federal funds rate, the rate at which banks typically borrow from each other, to one percent for a year. Though its intention was to lower the cost of borrowing and stimulate the economy, critics said the rate was too low and encouraged investments in risky subprime mortgage-backed securities, which they say contributed to the financial crisis in 2008.
The National Bureau of Economic Research, a research organization seen as an authority on measuring economic performance, later said that the recession officially began in December 2007.
In September 2007, Greenspan published a book that was both a memoir and economic commentary, “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” in which he criticized the George W. Bush administration for overspending and admitted that he supported the administration’s tax cuts without stressing the need for spending cuts.
In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek in August 2012, Greenspan said, “one day before Lehman Brothers crashes, conventional wisdom was not even certain that we would fall into a recession.”
“In fact, we learned many months later that the downward trend had actually started,” Greenspan said. “How could we have possibly got it so wrong? I mean, I actually was saying, ‘Yes, recession is coming, not that we’re here yet.’ We didn’t know that it had already hit.”
In October 2008, Greenspan acknowledged to a congressional committee discussing financial regulation that, “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.”
After Greenspan finished his term as chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2006, he established Greenspan Associates, an economic consulting firm in Washington, D.C.
With Greenspan as president, the firm had four employees as of October 2012. His client list has included giant finance clients like German firm Deutsche Bank and hedge fund Paulson & Co.
Personal life
Greenspan married artist Joan Mitchell in 1952. The couple divorced in 1953 after less than a year of marriage, and the marriage was later annulled. The two remained friends.
His first wife is remembered for introducing him to novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, with whom Greenspan shared a friendship, a belief in free-market economic ideals and a philosophy of objectivism. In his 30s and early 40s, Greenspan spent many hours sitting with Rand’s band of followers, known as the “Collective,” discussing topics including politics philosophy, current events and economics.
In addition to Burns at Columbia, Rand and her group were instrumental in helping hone Greenspan’s capitalist, free-market economic philosophy, according to Martin, Greenspan’s biographer.
The group’s open style of debate and discussion served Greenspan well in his various governmental roles. During his career in public service, he became known for a well-developed ability to communicate with Congress without offending those with opposing viewpoints or politicizing his messages.
Though he was said to back revamping the Social Security system and raising the retirement age, Greenspan was wary of how his public statements as Fed chairman might move markets. He rarely granted interviews. He was known for making openly ambiguous public statements about the state of the U.S. economy, once telling Congress, “If I’ve made myself too clear, you must have misunderstood me.”
Greenspan married NBC News correspondent Mitchell in 1997. Their marriage was officiated by the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
“We’ve had the most wonderful marriage,” he told Bloomberg Businessweek in August 2012. “It gets better every year. We’re still very much together in love.”
Fuel prices are displayed at a gas station in Brooklyn on June 01, 2026, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(NEW YORKI) –Drivers stung by high gas prices have enjoyed some welcome relief over the last couple of weeks, even as the impact of the Iran war continues to choke off oil supply.
The national average price of a gallon of gas stood at $4.26 on Wednesday, marking a decline of 30 cents, or 6.5%, since a recent peak on May 21.
Still, prices remain well above where they clocked in before a historic oil shock set off by the war. In late February, the average gallon of gas ran less than $3.
The dropoff in gas prices owes to a decline in oil costs over the latter part of last month, which coincided with a slump in demand following Memorial Day weekend, some analysts said.
Still, they cautioned, gas prices may rise again as oil prices jump and the war shows little sign of an imminent resolution. If the war continues, some analysts said, gas price could top $5 a gallon by next month.
“It’s so volatile,” Patrick Penfield, a professor of supply chain practice at Syracuse University, told ABC News. “If the war ended, prices would likely go down. But if it continues, you’ll see prices go up.”
In Georgia, the state with the lowest average gas prices, a gallon costs about $3.79, AAA data shows. In all, the AAA data says six states currently sell gas at or below an average price of $4 per gallon.
By contrast, the cost of a gallon of gas in California stands at $5.99, making it the state with the highest prices, AAA data shows. Even in California, however, the average price has fallen about 10 cents over the past week.
At the outset of the war, gasoline prices surged in response to Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a maritime trading route that facilitates the transport of about one-fifth of global crude supply.
Oil prices began to fall in mid-May, however, as Iran and the U.S. appeared willing to strike an agreement that would reopen the strait. Crude oil is the main ingredient in auto fuel, accounting for more than half of the price paid at the pump, according to the federal U.S. Energy Information Administration.
On Friday, U.S. oil prices fell as low as about $86 a barrel, marking a drop of about 20% over a 10-day stretch.
“Gas prices have seen a big push because crude prices have dropped. Crude prices have dropped largely because the president has been indicating that we’re close to an agreement with Iran,” Ramanan Krishnamoorti, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Houston, told ABC News.
The U.S. is a net exporter of petroleum, meaning the country produces more oil than it consumes. But since oil prices are set on a global market, U.S. prices move in response to swings in worldwide supply and demand.
Oil prices have ticked up in recent days, but they remain below $100 a barrel. As long as oil prices remain under that benchmark, gas prices may continue to hold steady or even decline, Denton Cinquegrana, chief oil analyst at Dow Jones Energy, told ABC News.
A near-term drop in gas prices appears possible because gas sellers are holding onto unusually large profit margins, meaning they could reduce retail prices even if their input costs maintain current levels, Cinquegrana said. Over the past two years, the average margin for sellers came in at about 34 cents per gallon, he added, but it currently stands at 50 cents per gallon.
“There’s still some room for gas prices to move down,” Cinquegrana said.
Looking weeks or months into the future, however, analysts cautioned about a rise in oil and gasoline prices unless normal tariff resumes in the Strait of Hormuz.
“It’s still possible later this summer, even ahead of July 4, we could see the national average pass $5 a gallon,” Patrick De Haan, a petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, told ABC News Live on Monday.
“We could be seeing much higher gas prices in very short order if the strait doesn’t reopen,” he added.
Prime Minister of Australia Anthony Albanese speaks during the 81st session of the United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly at the U.N. Headquarters on September 24, 2026 in New York City. (Ryan Murphy/Getty Images)
OpenAI on Friday revealed another hack into a second Australian government agency, a week after the disclosure of an initial hack fueled public backlash against the ChatGPT-maker.
An AI model gained access to fire statistics kept by a state agency in New South Wales (NSW) that were not publicly available from the department, OpenAI said in a statement to ABC News on Friday.
The company discovered the incident as part of a wider investigation into “misaligned model activity,” OpenAI said.
The AI model, according to OpenAI, queried the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service’s Fire History service in a manner that “went beyond its intended use, gathering summary fire statistics that weren’t publicly available through the service.”
“The results we reviewed do not show that the model retrieved any personal information,” OpenAI added.
The office of NSW Premier Chris Minns did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
In a statement to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Premier’s Department said it believes the incident took place in June, but OpenAI informed government officials about it on Thursday.
A host of NSW government agencies is working to “to investigate the matter and assess its impact,” the Premier’s Department said in the statement.
The cybersecurity breach marks the second disclosure of an OpenAI hack of an Australian government agency in a matter of days, and the revelation adds to a flurry of security incidents revealed by the San Francisco-based tech company in recent months.
In the previously disclosed hack, an OpenAI agent “infiltrated” an Australian public health website earlier this summer, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters last week.
The incident happened in June and involved a rogue AI agent gaining access to both public and non-public files associated with the Australian Medicare Statistics Reporting Portal, Albanese said.
Albanese said he has spoken with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman “to express Australia’s extreme concern about this incident” and said he also “expressed his disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred and the nature of the way that that notification occurred as well was unacceptable.”
In a statement at the time, an OpenAI spokesperson said the incident was discovered in August as the company conducted what it called an extensive review of “misaligned model activity.”
“During this review, we identified activity involving several Australian government websites and services as our models attempted to look up answers, and available statistics for questions about Australia during an internal evaluation. In the course of that, our models took actions we did not intend,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said Australian officials were notified on Sept. 10.
“Our review found no evidence of patient records being accessed. The information accessed included aggregate health statistics and internal file names,” the spokesperson added.
OpenAI issued an apology for the security breach last week.
“We are sorry and working to do better in the future,” OpenAI said in a statement. “One of the ways we intend to take accountability for the situation is to be intentional in working with Australia to help develop practical approaches to how AI developers and governments identify, disclose, and respond to AI cyber behavior, whether malicious or unintentional.”
Some analysts expressed serious concern about AI safety risks after an autonomous cyberattack disclosed by OpenAI in August. The company said that its AI models had escaped a “sandboxed testing environment” and gained access to the open internet.
A swarm of about 700 AI agents, in turn, hacked into AI firm Hugging Face and attempted to cover their tracks as they sought to complete the test, according to reports issued by research organizations METR and Redwood Research.
“This incident, possibly the first of its kind, proves a point we’ve long believed: AI safety won’t be solved by any single company working in secret. It will be solved in the open, collaboratively, with broad access to AI for every defender, everywhere,” Clem Delangue, the co-founder and CEO of Hugging Face, said in a statement on at the time of OpenAI’s disclosure in July.
Altman announced that the company dialed back the pace of its AI development earlier this month. “The world deserves confidence that American companies developing increasingly capable AI will act responsibly, especially as the trajectory of progress has steepened,” Altman said in a post on X at the time.
OpenAI signaled further restraint toward its AI models this week, pausing the release of its latest AI model, GPT-6.1 Astra, due to security concerns.
