Tech CEOs Get the National Medal of Science

President Donald Trump presented the National Medal of Science to four technology leaders on Thursday, October 8, adding Elon Musk, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang and AMD chief executive Lisa Su to the roll of recipients of the nation's highest honor for scientific achievement. At the same ceremony, Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell and Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Trump awarded the honors during the White House's "Science: A New Golden Age" summit at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, according to the White House. The medals are the highest honors the federal government bestows for scientific and technological achievement. The summit brought together leading scientists and tech executives to discuss how private-sector investment can accelerate scientific breakthroughs.

The summit doubled as a funding announcement. The administration said tech companies pledged $2.4 billion in computing power for the Genesis Mission, a program that applies AI to federal scientific research across 14 agencies covering energy, health and space. Nvidia committed $1 billion, AMD pledged $500 million, OpenAI $200 million, and Anthropic and Google $150 million each. The mission began through the Energy Department in November 2025, and Trump has taken to calling AI "super intelligence," a rebrand he pushed again on social media during the event. Nvidia's Huang said the funding puts advanced "super intelligence" in the hands of America's scientists to speed breakthroughs in medicine, energy and materials. AMP and Emerald AI committed $100 million each, while AWS, Armada, Crusoe and Micron are each contributing $50 million. The ceremony was the first time Trump has presented the medals during his current term, and it underscored how central the technology industry has become to the administration's science policy.

A break from tradition

The choices break with how the National Medal of Science is usually handed out. Established in 1959, the medal has mostly gone to university researchers and laboratory scientists rather than corporate chief executives. Trump drew a family connection: his uncle John Trump, an electrical engineer and MIT professor, received the National Medal of Science in 1983. The president called the six honorees "national treasures" and told the room it ranked among the biggest days for science and technology.

Politics around the medals

The ceremony overlapped with Nobel Prize announcement week, which put the White House's National Medal of Science event in the long shadow of the world's most famous science prizes. The guest list carried its own politics. Musk, who runs SpaceX and Tesla, gave more than $290 million to Trump's 2024 campaign, according to CNBC. The honorees have become regulars in Washington: Musk, Huang and Su sat at the head table of a recent state dinner for Chinese leader Xi Jinping, while Huang and Musk were among the executives who signed a voluntary agreement on AI development after recent models raised national security concerns.

Federal agencies used the same day to announce new research funding tied to the Genesis Mission, according to Nextgov. The Pentagon said it would commit up to $350 million to quantum computing initiatives aimed at national security uses, while the Energy Department announced $159 million in new project awards and $96 million for early-career researchers, along with a new graduate fellowship program. The announcements framed the National Medal of Science ceremony as the centerpiece of a broader push to tie federal research to private-sector computing power. The awards landed just as the White House was rolling out the Genesis Mission funding, tying the honors to a concrete bet on AI-driven research.

The National Medal of Science now belongs to the executives running the companies building the systems Washington wants to call "super intelligence." Whether the awards widen what the medal means or simply match the honor to the people bankrolling American AI, the summit's message was plain: the administration wants the biggest names in technology standing behind its science agenda.