Trump gives top US science awards to Elon Musk and other tech executives

United States President Donald Trump has awarded the country’s most prestigious honours in science and engineering to executives from top technology firms including SpaceX, Alphabet, Microsoft and Nvidia.

On Thursday, Trump presented the National Medal of Science to billionaire SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Lisa Su of the semiconductor firm AMD.

Two more recipients received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation: Michael Dell of Dell Technologies and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

At the award ceremony, Trump credited the honourees with “helping pioneer 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 receiving medals on Thursday were born outside the US. Four are among the 10 wealthiest people in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The award ceremony took place hours after the Trump administration announced it was suspending Microsoft and other top tech companies from using the H-1B visa system, which allows companies to hire skilled foreign workers and put them on a path towards permanent residency in the US.

The suspension, officials said, was due to the companies allegedly using the system in a fraudulent manner.

White House builds ties with Silicon Valley

The medal ceremony was 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 money to Trump’s second inauguration, and several high-profile industry leaders attended his swearing-in, including Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Trump, for his part, has pledged to slash regulations and position the US “as the world leader in artificial intelligence”.

He has also touted self-regulation in the AI industry amid concerns about the safety of the technology.

Several of the tech entrepreneurs honoured on Thursday have forged close ties to the White House, through political and business dealings.

The South Africa-born Musk, for example, was the largest contributor to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and has been a supporter of right-wing causes around the world, which he amplifies on his social media platform, X.

He briefly served as a special adviser to the president during the first months of Trump’s second term, helping to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its efforts to downsize the federal government.

Around the time he left DOGE, however, Musk and Trump had a public falling-out over the president’s tax-and-spending plans.

The two have since reconciled. On Thursday, Trump hailed Musk as “our modern-day Thomas Edison” and an “industrial titan”, citing his work with the aerospace company SpaceX and the carmaker Tesla.

“Few Americans in history have done more to advance America’s national interest than Elon in one field after another,” Trump said.

Another honouree, Dell, has been a financial backer of the president’s efforts to launch Trump Accounts, a scheme to enrol American children born during Trump’s second term into government-backed investment accounts.

Dell and his wife Susan Dell committed $6.25bn to the programme last year.

Separately, the White House entered into a deal in August for the US government to take a 15 percent cut of any AI chip sales that Nvidia and AMD make with China.

Huang, Nvidia’s co-founder, later invested in the struggling US tech firm Intel. He is reported to be among the donors financing Trump’s plans for a new White House ballroom.

The National Medal of Science was first awarded in 1963 to Theodore von Karman, a pioneer in aerospace engineering who fled anti-Semitism in Europe during World War II.

He went on to help found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.

Nominations for the award are solicited by the National Science Foundation, and the recipients are ultimately selected by a committee appointed by the president.