Trump Awards Top US Science Medals to Elon Musk and Other Tech Leaders
Theo Al Jazeera
President Donald Trump presented the National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to leaders from SpaceX, Alphabet, Microsoft, Nvidia and AMD. The ceremony came as the White House deepens its ties with Silicon Valley — and just hours after the administration moved to suspend H-1B visa use by Microsoft and other tech firms.
President Donald Trump has awarded the United States' highest honors in science and engineering to leaders from some of the world's biggest technology companies, including SpaceX, Alphabet, Microsoft and Nvidia.
At a ceremony on Thursday, Trump presented the National Medal of Science to billionaire Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla; Google co-founder Sergey Brin; Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang; and Lisa Su of chipmaker AMD.
Two others received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation: Michael Dell of Dell Technologies and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
At the ceremony, Trump credited the honorees with helping "build an extraordinary future for America."
"Because of the people in this room, we will always be in the lead. Nobody can compete with us," Trump said.
Five of the six medal recipients on Thursday were born outside the United States. Four rank among the world's 10 richest people on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The ceremony came just hours after the Trump administration announced it was suspending the use of the H-1B visa system by Microsoft and several other leading tech companies. The visa allows businesses to hire skilled foreign workers and offers a path to permanent residency in the US. Officials said the suspension stemmed from allegations that the companies had used the system fraudulently.
White House Tightens Its Ties With Silicon Valley
The medal ceremony is the latest example of the increasingly close relationship between Silicon Valley's tech leadership and the Trump administration's second term — a bond that critics view with concern.
Powerful companies such as Amazon, Meta and Nvidia have donated money to Trump's second inauguration, and a number of prominent industry leaders attended the swearing-in, including Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
For his part, Trump has pledged to cut regulations and make the US "the world leader in artificial intelligence." He has also praised the AI industry's self-governance at a time of concern about the technology's safety.
Several of the tech figures honored on Thursday have built close ties with the White House through political and business activity.
Musk, who was born in South Africa, was the largest donor to Trump's 2024 presidential campaign and is a backer of right-wing causes around the world, which he frequently amplifies on his social media platform X.
He served as a special adviser to the president during the opening months of Trump's second term, helping lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and efforts to shrink the federal government. Around the time he left DOGE, however, Musk and Trump clashed publicly over the president's tax and spending plans. The two later patched things up.
On Thursday, Trump praised Musk as a "modern-day Thomas Edison" and an "industrialist," citing his work with the space company SpaceX and the carmaker Tesla.
"Very few Americans in history have done more than Elon to advance America's national interests, in field after field," Trump said.
Another honoree, Dell, is a donor to the president's effort to roll out Trump Accounts — a plan to put American children born during Trump's second term into government-backed investment accounts. Dell and his wife, Susan Dell, pledged $6.25 billion to the program last year.
Separately, in August the White House reached an agreement for the US government to take 15% of revenue from all AI chip sales that Nvidia and AMD make to China. Huang, Nvidia's co-founder, later invested in struggling US chipmaker Intel. He is reported to be among the donors for a planned new White House ballroom.
The National Medal of Science was first awarded in 1963 to Theodore von Karman, a pioneer of aeronautical engineering who left Europe to escape anti-Semitism during World War II. He later helped found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.
Nominations for the award are gathered by the National Science Foundation, and the final recipients are chosen by a panel appointed by the president.
