The US President presented the nation’s highest science and technology awards to leaders of SpaceX, Alphabet, Nvidia, AMD, Dell and Microsoft, even as his administration moved to suspend Microsoft and other firms from the H-1B visa programme.
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United States President Donald Trump has conferred the country’s highest honours in science and technology on a group of prominent industry leaders, among them executives from SpaceX, Alphabet, Microsoft and Nvidia.
The National Medal of Science went to Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla; Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google; Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang; and Lisa Su of chipmaker AMD. The National Medal of Technology and Innovation was awarded to Michael Dell of Dell Technologies and Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella.
Speaking at the ceremony, Trump said the recipients were helping to “pioneer an incredible future for America”. He added that, because of them, the country would “always be on top” and that no rival could match it.
Five of the six honourees were born outside the United States, and four rank among the world’s ten richest people, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The event came only hours after the administration announced that Microsoft and several other leading technology companies had been suspended from the H-1B visa system, which lets employers recruit skilled foreign workers and offers a route to permanent US residency. Officials said the suspension followed allegations that the firms had used the programme fraudulently.
A closer bond with Silicon Valley
Critics view the ceremony as one more sign of the deepening ties between Silicon Valley’s leaders and Trump’s second administration. Companies such as Amazon, Meta and Nvidia donated to his second inauguration, and figures including Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos attended the swearing-in.
Trump has vowed to cut regulation and make the US the global leader in artificial intelligence, and has promoted self-regulation by the AI industry despite concerns over the technology’s safety.
Several of honourees have close political or business links to the White House. Musk, born in South Africa, was the biggest donor to Trump’s 2024 campaign and briefly advised the president early in his second term, helping lead the Department of Government Efficiency’s push to shrink the federal workforce. The two fell out publicly over the president’s tax and spending plans around the time Musk departed, but have since reconciled. Trump called him “our modern-day Thomas Edison” and an “industrial titan”, saying few Americans had done more for the national interest.
Money, chips and ballrooms
Michael Dell and his wife Susan have backed Trump Accounts, a scheme to place investments in government-backed accounts for American children born during his current term, committing $6.25bn last year.
In August, the White House struck an agreement under which Washington takes a 15 percent share of Nvidia and AMD’s AI chip sales to China. Huang later invested in the struggling chipmaker Intel and is reportedly among those funding Trump’s planned White House ballroom.
First presented in 1963 to aerospace pioneer Theodore von Karman, who fled European anti-Semitism during the Second World War and later helped found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech, the National Medal of Science relies on nominations gathered by the National Science Foundation. A presidentially appointed committee makes the final selections.
