United States President Donald Trump has bestowed the nation’s highest science and engineering honors on leaders of leading technology companies, including SpaceX, Alphabet, Microsoft and Nvidia.
On Thursday, Trump presented the National Medal of Science to SpaceX billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Lisa Su of semiconductor company AMD.
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Two other recipients received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation: Michael Dell of Dell Technologies and Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft.
At the awards ceremony, Trump credited the winners for “helping create an incredible future for America.”
“Because of these people here, we will always be on top. No one else can compete with us,” Trump said.
Five of the six people awarded medals Thursday were born outside the United States. Four of them are among the 10 richest people in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The awards ceremony came hours after the Trump administration announced it was suspending Microsoft and other big tech companies from using the H-1B visa system, which allows companies to hire skilled foreign workers and put them on a path to permanent residency in the United States.
According to officials, the suspension was due to the companies allegedly using the system fraudulently.
The White House forges ties with Silicon Valley
The medal ceremony is the latest example of what critics see as an increasingly close relationship between Silicon Valley tech executives and the second Trump administration.
Powerful companies like Amazon, Meta and Nvidia contributed financially to Trump’s second inauguration, and several prominent industry executives attended his swearing-in, including Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Trump, for his part, has pledged to cut regulations and position the United States “as the world leader in artificial intelligence.”
He also touted the merits of self-regulation of the AI sector, amid concerns over the safety of the technology.
Several of the tech entrepreneurs honored Thursday have developed close ties to the White House, through political and business connections.
South African-born Musk, for example, was the largest contributor to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and has supported right-wing causes around the world, which he amplifies on his social media platform, X.
He briefly served as special advisor to the president during the early months of Trump’s second term, helping to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its efforts to reduce the size of the federal government.
However, around the time he left DOGE, Musk and Trump argued publicly over the president’s tax and spending plans.
The two men have since reconciled. On Thursday, Trump hailed Musk as “our modern-day Thomas Edison” and an “industrial titan,” citing his work with aerospace company SpaceX and automaker Tesla.
“Few Americans in history have done as much as Elon to advance America’s national interest in one area after another,” Trump said.
Another winner, Dell, was a backer of the president’s efforts to launch Trump Accounts, a program aimed at enrolling American children born during Trump’s second term in government-guaranteed investment accounts.
Dell and his wife Susan Dell committed $6.25 billion to the program last year.
Separately, the White House reached an agreement in August for the US government to take a 15% cut of all sales of AI chips that Nvidia and AMD make with China.
Huang, co-founder of Nvidia, later invested in struggling US technology company Intel. He is reportedly among the donors funding Trump’s plans for a new ballroom at the White House.
The National Medal of Science was first awarded in 1963 to Theodore von Karman, an aerospace engineering pioneer who fled anti-Semitism in Europe during World War II.
He later helped found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.
Nominations for the award are solicited by the National Science Foundation, and winners are ultimately selected by a committee appointed by the president.
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