Photo caption: President Donald Trump
President Donald Trump will award the National Medal of Science to Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Sergey Brin and Lisa Su, and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to Michael Dell and Satya Nadella, at a White House science summit on Thursday. The event, titled ‘Science: A New Golden Age Summit,’ marks Trump’s first time conferring either honor. Every recipient has contributed financially to Trump or Republican causes, with Musk alone giving more than $290 million during the 2024 election cycle. The summit is also expected to feature announcements tied to the administration’s ‘Genesis Project’ AI initiative, including over $1 billion in commitments. The choice of well-known tech executives represents a departure from the medals’ traditional focus on less prominent researchers and academics.
President Donald Trump will present some of the nation’s highest scientific honors to a group of technology executives at a White House summit on Thursday, recognizing figures whose companies and personal fortunes have been deeply intertwined with his political rise.
The recipients include Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX chief Elon Musk, Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) CEO Lisa Su, all of whom will receive the National Medal of Science. Michael Dell, founder of Dell Technologies (DELL), and Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella will be awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
The event, titled “Science: A New Golden Age Summit,” marks the first time Trump has conferred either medal since returning to office, according to Fox News, which first reported the story. CNBC confirmed the details with the White House.
“The Trump Administration is grateful for the contributions of these incredible leaders in science and technology,” White House assistant press secretary Liz Huston said in an emailed statement. “These recipients are helping ensure America keeps leading the world in innovation.”
The ceremony comes roughly a week after Trump hosted an artificial intelligence-focused luncheon at the White House that included several of the same executives. After that gathering, the president told reporters he had signed what he described as a “morally binding” document with tech leaders as calls for a slowdown in AI model development reached a fever pitch.
Beyond the medal presentations, Thursday’s summit is expected to feature announcements tied to the administration’s “Genesis Project” AI initiative, including more than $1 billion in commitments and investments from the National Science Foundation and the Energy Department, according to a report from Axios. That figure includes $100 million in credits from an entity called National Compute.
Financial ties between honorees and Trump
Every award recipient at the summit has contributed financially in some capacity to Trump or Republican campaigns and causes, according to CNBC’s reporting. The scale of those contributions varies widely, from personal donations to corporate gifts.
Musk stands apart as the president’s largest financial backer in the 2024 election cycle, having contributed more than $290 million. He subsequently took on a role as a special government employee in the Trump administration, where he led an effort to slash the federal workforce.
Brin attended Trump’s inauguration and gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Republican National Committee in 2025. Huang donated to a fund established to build Trump’s White House ballroom, while Nvidia contributed $1 million to the inauguration ceremony itself.
Dell has been a longtime Trump donor. Along with his wife Susan, he committed $6.25 billion to seed “Trump Accounts,” a program designed to jumpstart savings for children in the United States. AMD has also contributed to Trump-related funds.
The president’s own financial disclosures add another layer to the relationship. According to his most recent filing, Trump bought or sold shares in SpaceX, Tesla, Nvidia, Microsoft, AMD and Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL) as recently as July.
Departure from precedent
The choice of recipients represents a notable break from how the medals have traditionally been distributed. The National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation typically recognize researchers, academics and inventors whose work may be influential but rarely places them in the public spotlight.
Previous recipients have generally not included household-name technology executives of the stature of Musk or Huang, according to a review of past honorees. The awards, established by Congress and administered by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office respectively, have historically gone to figures from university laboratories, government research institutions and industrial R&D divisions.
The composition of this year’s list — dominated by executives from companies with trillions of dollars in combined market value — underscores how closely the Trump administration has aligned itself with the technology industry’s most prominent figures.
The summit itself is part of a broader pattern of engagement between the White House and Silicon Valley. The AI luncheon held in late September brought together many of the same executives and served as a venue for the president to signal his administration’s approach to AI governance.
For investors, the ceremony carries symbolic weight. The companies represented by the honorees — Tesla, Nvidia, AMD, Dell, Microsoft and Alphabet — account for a substantial portion of U.S. equity market capitalization. Formal recognition from the White House reinforces the perception that these firms enjoy privileged access to the administration, even as their leaders navigate complex regulatory and policy questions around AI, semiconductors and data centers.
The event also highlights the extent to which personal relationships between the president and individual executives have become a defining feature of technology policy under the current administration.
While the medals themselves carry no direct financial benefit, the optics of the ceremony — coming amid ongoing debates over AI regulation, federal workforce reductions and government technology procurement — are likely to draw scrutiny from critics who see the awards as political patronage dressed up as scientific recognition.
The White House has framed the summit as a celebration of American innovation and a signal that the administration intends to maintain U.S. leadership in emerging technologies. The Genesis Project announcements expected alongside the medal ceremony suggest the event will serve dual purposes: honoring individual achievement while promoting a forward-looking technology agenda.
The summit is scheduled to take place at the White House on Thursday, with the medal presentations serving as the centerpiece of the event.
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