What did Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher say about Elon Musk giving every US kid a SpaceX share?

On Pivot, Kara Swisher called Elon Musk's pledge of one SpaceX share for each American child a stunt and said she would rather see him taxed properly or give money away like MacKenzie Scott. Scott Galloway put the gift at roughly $11 billion across 73 million children, about $144 a share and around 1.5% of Musk's roughly 5 billion shares, and argued it is customer acquisition: a way to create millions of retail shareholders rooting for SpaceX.

• The pledge followed Anthropic committing 5% of its shares to a new public benefit fund, which Musk mocked.
• Galloway said he prefers baby bonds, such as Bill Ackman's idea of $7,000 per newborn invested in a low-cost index fund.
• Galloway wants CEOs to maximise profit and pay an alternative minimum tax of about 40% on very high earners and large companies.

▸In their words

“So he's kind of giving away the crumbs, not the meal, which is fine.” Scott Galloway · at 10:50 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Pivot (2026-10-20). Read the whole episode summary →

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