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”. 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.
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.
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