Silicon Valley tech billionaires engage in philanthropy through equity donations, charitable funds, and stock gifts, embedding wealth distribution into corporate capital structures. Anthropic has established a public interest fund; Musk plans to gift shares to children; the Dell couple have funded investment accounts. These actions reflect effective altruism and long-termism, emphasizing efficient resource allocation. However, controversy arises: Should the distribution of technological gains be controlled by a select few? Can ordinary people share ownership of technology and have a voice in decision-making? The article argues that private philanthropy cannot replace public finance and democratic institutions; true equity must be built on shared ownership and collective decision-making.Author and source: WeChat public account "Dongchengshitiao Capital"
More than a decade ago, a young, handsome Oxford graduate stood in front of a grocery store shelf, hesitating over which breakfast cereal to buy. He wondered to himself: if he consistently chose the cheaper brand for a year, would the money saved be enough to save a life?
This person is the British philosopher William MacAskill, who later became a prominent advocate of effective altruism. The core idea of this philosophy is to direct limited resources toward initiatives that generate the greatest social benefit, using rational analysis and impact evaluation to ensure every dollar helps as many people as possible.
Today, effective altruism has become a powerful intellectual movement within Silicon Valley’s tech community. In particular, some AI entrepreneurs and investors believe that technological advancement can not only generate immense wealth but also pose significant risks to humanity’s future. Ensuring AI safety and addressing the impact of technology on employment and social structures have become key concerns for this group of tech elites.
America’s new generation of tech billionaires have taken some steps. A week before its anticipated listing as the largest IPO in history, AI company Anthropic announced a special arrangement: allocating 5% of the company’s shares to a newly established Anthropic Public Benefit Fund. Based on external expectations for its IPO valuation, this equity stake could be worth tens of billions of dollars—but it is not an immediate cash donation. The fund may also receive additional shares over time, at the discretion of the board, as the company’s valuation increases. Anthropic stated that specific valuation benchmarks and governance details will be disclosed later.
The next day, the world’s richest person, Musk, stated on X that he plans to gift one share of SpaceX stock to every child in the United States starting in 2027, calling it merely “the first of many plans.” Based on the approximate 72 million minors in the U.S. and SpaceX’s share price of about $146 at the time, the potential value of this initiative is around $10.5 billion.
The billionaires who have amassed enormous wealth through technology are now vigorously engaging with humanity’s future, seeking to legitimize their wealth accumulation through philanthropy. Unlike traditional charitable practices—where wealth was simply returned to society through direct donations, material aid, or the construction of schools and libraries—they tend to focus on social issues with long-term potential returns. They set measurable goals, leverage capital, technology, and talent to amplify impact, allow for failure, and adjust resource allocation based on outcomes.
Doesn't that sound a bit like venture capital?
This is precisely at the heart of effective altruism: resources should flow to where they can generate the greatest social benefit. But the problem is that the benefits and risks of technological progress are not always borne by the same group of people. An AI technology may significantly increase overall societal productivity while simultaneously causing some workers to lose their jobs. Simply calculating the total benefits of a technology cannot answer who should bear the losses or how the gains should be shared.
This raises an even deeper question: when a small number of companies control AI models, computing power, and capital, do ordinary people have no choice but to wait for corporations or the wealthy to decide how to compensate them? Can they participate in the distribution of wealth created by technology—or even become owners of that wealth?
When donations become part of a company’s capital structure
On October 26, Anthropic officially filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC
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Publicly filed its prospectus, planning to list on Nasdaq under the stock ticker ANT. According to market analysts and investors, its IPO valuation could reach $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion. If achieved, Anthropic could set a new global record for IPO valuation, surpassing the annual GDP of many countries worldwide.
Anthropic mentioned in its prospectus that the AI technologies it is developing could pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity. The filing shows that the company’s co-founders have pledged to donate 80% of their personal Anthropic equity to charitable causes. In January, founder Dario Amodei, in an open letter, stated that the wealthy have a responsibility to support workers and their families who will be left behind in the age of artificial intelligence.
As previously mentioned, Anthropic proposed establishing a charitable fund one week before the public filing of its prospectus; however, the fund was structured as a limited liability company rather than a traditional nonprofit to maintain flexibility across different forms of donations. The company also stated that the equity held by the fund will not be used for lobbying or political contributions.
Elon Musk, who also led one of the largest IPOs in history, does not agree with Anthropic’s arrangement. After Anthropic announced its charitable foundation plan, he directly replied to the related post: “I suggest giving shares directly to the public.” Musk then proposed his own share-gifting plan; however, this is a personal commitment, and no specific implementation details have been disclosed yet—including eligibility criteria for recipients, methods of share transfer, or whether lock-up periods will apply.
Unlike Anthropic, which manages equity through a charitable foundation, Musk proposes directly distributing corporate shares to the public. Recipients will not only receive a one-time cash payment but also become shareholders of SpaceX, sharing in any future capital gains the company may generate, while also bearing the risk of stock price fluctuations.
Elon Musk’s pledge also has a specific context. In June 2026, SpaceX completed its IPO, becoming one of the most closely watched offerings in the global capital markets that year, raising approximately $85.7 billion. Following the listing, Musk’s ownership stake in the company gained a clearer market valuation. The shares he is offering to gift are personally held SpaceX shares, not funds directly provided by SpaceX as a company.
Before Musk, Gwynne Shotwell, President and Chief Operating Officer of SpaceX, made a similar arrangement. In July 2026, she and her husband pledged to gift SpaceX shares to over two million children, primarily targeting low-income families in Texas. Based on the stock price at the time, the donation was valued at approximately $320 million. Reports indicate that these shares represent about one-fifth of the Class A shares owned or eligible for purchase by Shotwell. While her donation was significantly smaller than Musk’s, she likewise chose to transfer corporate equity directly rather than donate cash.
In contrast to Anthropic and SpaceX, Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell has taken a more straightforward approach. Last year, he and his wife, Susan Dell, pledged to donate $6.25 billion to deposit $250 into investment accounts for 25 million children in the United States. These accounts are part of the U.S. government’s Trump Account initiative, designed to establish long-term investment accounts for children. The Dells’ funding primarily targets eligible children from low-income communities.
Unlike Musk’s gifting of SpaceX shares, the Dell couple pledged cash funds, directed through their family charitable arrangements into children’s accounts, rather than direct disbursements from Dell Technologies. The funds in these accounts will be used for long-term investments, allowing the children to access the accumulated assets upon reaching adulthood. This approach combines charitable giving with personal wealth accumulation, enabling beneficiaries not only to receive immediate support but also to benefit from long-term returns in the capital markets.
Looking at these donations together, we can see that the philanthropic approaches of Silicon Valley tech billionaires have begun to show some new trends.
First, the donated assets expanded from cash to corporate equity. The Dell couple contributed cash, while Musk and Shotwell transferred SpaceX shares, and Anthropic placed its company shares into a charitable fund. The value of equity fluctuates with the company’s growth, linking the scale of the donation to the company’s future potential.
Second, the timing of the donation has been moved earlier. Traditional philanthropy typically occurs after wealth accumulation, when billionaires transfer already-liquidated assets to foundations or nonprofit organizations. Anthropic’s approach, by contrast, integrates a portion of its equity into charitable arrangements while the company is still in a phase of rapid growth and before completing its IPO. Donation is no longer merely an allocation at the end of wealth creation—it is also becoming part of a company’s capital structure.
Moreover, the ways to benefit are no longer limited to traditional charitable organizations. The Dell couple has funded children’s investment accounts, Musk has proposed directly gifting stocks to children, and Anthropic has left room for future allocations to specific groups. Beneficiaries now have the opportunity to directly hold assets and participate in the long-term growth of businesses and capital markets.
This change is not merely an individual choice by a few billionaires. OpenAI’s corporate structure offers another model. After its restructuring was completed in 2025, the original nonprofit organization was renamed the OpenAI Foundation and acquired approximately 26% equity in the for-profit OpenAI Group. Based on the valuation at the time, this equity stake was worth about $130 billion. The foundation also retained control over OpenAI Group, including the authority to appoint and remove board members. This is not a recent donation of wealth by a founder, but rather a corporate governance structure in which a nonprofit holds an equity stake in a commercial company and participates in shaping its strategic direction.
Who decides the wealth distribution for ordinary people?
It is not new for the wealthy to be passionate about charity. In 1889, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie published "The Gospel of Wealth," putting forward the now-famous view that "he who dies rich dies disgraced."
In Carnegie’s view, industrial society inevitably leads to the concentration of wealth. It is not inherently wrong for a few individuals to amass great fortunes through business acumen; the real issue lies in how these fortunes are ultimately used. He opposed wealthy individuals bequeathing their assets to heirs for wasteful spending, and he also disapproved of donating wealth only after death. Carnegie argued that the rich should assume the responsibility of stewards during their lifetimes, using their private wealth to fund public goods such as libraries, universities, and hospitals, thereby transforming wealth into social resources.
This philosophy laid an important foundation for modern American philanthropy. Subsequently, industrial titans such as Rockefeller and Ford established large foundations, marking the beginning of private wealth entering the public sphere in an institutionalized manner. A logic that endures to this day also emerged: wealth may be created and held by a few, but the wealthy have a responsibility to determine how to return a portion of it to society.
Over a century later, this logic is changing.
The philanthropy of traditional industrial giants has primarily focused on social giving after wealth accumulation, through donations to build schools, hospitals, and public infrastructure to improve public services. However, today’s tech billionaires face a different situation: the technologies they create themselves may become forces that reshape wealth distribution and social structures.
Especially AI. It is not just a new business frontier but also has the potential to transform how companies produce goods, alter employment opportunities and income sources for workers, and realign the relationship between capital and labor. This has also led tech billionaires to develop new perspectives on philanthropy, believing they should not only have the right to decide how money is earned but also how it is spent and which societal issues deserve priority.
This mindset is rooted in Silicon Valley’s long-standing technological optimism—the belief that innovation can solve societal problems, and that a small group of individuals with specialized expertise, capital, and execution capabilities can drive social progress more effectively than traditional institutions. Within this value system, entrepreneurs are not only seen as creators of wealth but also as solvers of societal challenges.
Effective Altruism provides a methodological framework for this role. It emphasizes that doing good should not rely solely on the donor’s subjective intentions, but must also measure the actual impact generated by the funds. Cost-benefit comparisons should be conducted across different charitable projects, and resources should be directed toward areas that yield the greatest social benefit. This approach introduces scientific research, data analysis, and investment-return-style evaluation methods into charitable decision-making.
Longtermism extends this thinking to a much more distant future. It holds that the interests of future generations deserve equal consideration, and that today’s human choices may shape the fate of humanity for centuries or even longer. William MacAskill systematically articulates this perspective in his book What We Owe the Future. Following this logic, issues such as artificial intelligence misalignment, major technological risks, and humanity’s long-term survival may warrant higher priority than many immediate social concerns.
Combining these two approaches has transformed the allocation of charitable resources. Donors are no longer simply handing over money to traditional charities and leaving it to recipients to decide how to use it; instead, they are intervening throughout the process like investors—identifying problems worth solving, evaluating technological pathways, selecting implementation teams, measuring project impact, and continuously investing based on actual progress.
This is also a core characteristic of what is known as "philanthrocapitalism"—it brings the management methods, performance standards, and investment logic of the business world into the realm of philanthropy. Charity is no longer merely the transfer of wealth from private accounts to the public sphere; it is also becoming a proactive way to allocate resources and influence the direction of social development.
Therefore, tech billionaires' charitable actions are not entirely separate from business; they are closely tied to the sources of their wealth, industry interests, and their outlook on the future. Anthropic’s allocation of partial equity to a public welfare fund is a response to the societal impact of AI and a way to pre-arrange the distribution of future gains within the company’s capital structure. Similarly, Musk’s proposal to gift SpaceX shares to children seeks to link personal wealth with public participation in corporate growth.
But when the wealthy begin to actively participate in the distribution of social wealth, who has granted them this power?
Stanford University political science professor Rob Reich argues in Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better that large private charitable foundations are not inherently aligned with democratic values. They can convert private wealth into public influence without being subject to elections, public deliberation, or the same level of accountability as governments. Donors not only decide how much money to give, but also determine which issues deserve priority, which research should be funded, and which groups should benefit first.
This is precisely where tech philanthropy demands the greatest caution. The ability to create wealth does not inherently confer the right to determine the public interest. Someone may become a billionaire through sound business judgment, yet that does not grant them legitimate authority to decide the broader direction of societal development. Especially when AI may impact the work, income, and lives of hundreds of millions of ordinary people, technological owners participating in resource allocation through private foundations and charitable initiatives cannot substitute for broader public discourse and institutional frameworks.
Ordinary people typically participate in wealth distribution through institutional arrangements such as taxation, fiscal budgets, public policies, and social security. Although these mechanisms are imperfect, they at least involve public discourse and institutional constraints. In contrast, decision-making power within private charitable foundations is highly concentrated in the hands of donors and their management teams. Wealthy individuals can use their resources to choose which technologies to fund, which research to support, and which problems to address. Their influence may even extend to government policies and industry development. This creates a paradox: the more technological advancements affect everyone, the more power to determine their direction becomes concentrated in the hands of a few.
Who ultimately benefits from the productivity gains brought by AI?
Whether distributing money or shares, the first thing to clarify is that private charity and public finance are never the same mechanism for allocating resources.
Public finance is generated through taxation, and budget expenditures原则上 require legislative procedures, public discourse, and audit oversight. Government decisions may be slow or inefficient, but at least there are relatively clear channels of public accountability. Private charity, however, is different. Donors can set the mission of their funds based on their own value judgments, determine where funds are allocated and who benefits, and can modify or even terminate projects. Even when funds are used for public purposes, the decision-making process may not be open to the public.
Political scientist Rob Reich has discussed this issue, noting that the wealthy can convert private wealth into public influence through charitable giving without being subject to the democratic constraints that govern governments. The larger and more far-reaching the scale of philanthropy, the more warrant there is to examine how private wealth shapes public issues.
In the AI era, this contradiction has been further amplified. When an AI company like Anthropic participates in deciding how to compensate for losses caused by technological change, to what extent can it represent the affected workers? Musk’s proposal to gift SpaceX shares to children also attempts to let the public share in corporate growth. But for those who do not receive shares, and for those who may lose their jobs and income due to technological change, how meaningful is such an arrangement as a safeguard?
I believe one key to addressing these issues lies in who ultimately benefits from the productivity gains brought by AI. If the additional gains are primarily converted into corporate profits and shareholder returns, then redistributing a portion of this wealth through charitable donations afterward cannot solve the broader question of how society as a whole shares in the fruits of technological progress. Donations may help some individuals, but they cannot replace labor protections, tax systems, or social safety nets, nor can they alter the ownership structures already established in the process of wealth creation.
Effective altruism emphasizes maximizing social benefit from limited resources through rational calculation and impact assessment. However, when technology companies are both drivers of change and participants in associated risks, donors and beneficiaries may not share the same interests. Simply calculating which approach helps more people does not necessarily answer what is fair.
For example, a supermarket introduces an AI checkout system, reducing the number of human cashiers, lowering operating costs, and increasing profits. Subsequently, the company allocates funds to support displaced employees in attending vocational training. From a charitable perspective, this investment may help some individuals find new employment—and potentially assist more people than direct cash subsidies. However, for workers who have lost their jobs, what they may need is income security during unemployment, opportunities for job transition, and the right to participate in decisions regarding the company’s technological upgrades and workforce adjustments. While a company can calculate the return on investment of a training program, it cannot use such calculations alone to determine what constitutes fair compensation for its employees.
This reminded me of a few days ago, when Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin discussed technological development, security, and decentralization on the podcast "Silicon Valley 101." As one of the most influential figures in the cryptocurrency space, Vitalik has long focused on decentralized technologies and their social value. He proposed the concept of "d/acc"—defensive accelerationism—which advocates continuing to advance technology while prioritizing the development of tools that enhance societal resilience, empowering more individuals to protect themselves rather than relying entirely on a few centralized institutions for security.
He used epidemic prevention as an example. If there is concern that AI could assist people in creating dangerous viruses, one approach is to restrict the most powerful models and prevent them from providing relevant information; another approach is to enhance capabilities in virus detection, air filtration, and vaccine development, enabling society to detect and respond to risks more quickly and effectively. The first approach seeks to control dangerous capabilities, while the second aims to empower more people with defensive capabilities.
If this line of thinking is extended to wealth distribution, ordinary people need not only compensation for technological advancements, but also ownership of the benefits generated by these advancements and the right to participate in determining the direction of technological development.
This article is from the WeChat public account "Dongsi Shitiao Capital" (ID: DsstCapital), authored by Wei Xianghui.