President Trump awarded the nation's highest science honors Thursday to Elon Musk, Nvidia's Jensen Huang, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and AMD chief executive Lisa Su, four tech billionaires whose combined donations to efforts tied to Trump and his administration total nearly $6 billion, according to The New Republic.
The awards were presented at the Golden Age of American Innovation Summit, an event that gathered technology executives in Washington as the administration presses its agenda on artificial intelligence and semiconductor manufacturing. Trump told the audience the recipients would "pioneer an incredible future for America," adding that "we will always be on top. No one else can compete with us."
The donation figure spans giving by the four individuals and the companies they lead, including Alphabet, Google's parent company. Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive, has been the most visible tech figure in Trump's orbit, spending more than $250 million on the president's 2024 campaign and later leading a government efficiency effort before departing the role.
Huang's Nvidia has become the central supplier of the AI chips driving the current technology boom, with a market value that crossed $4 trillion this year. His presence at the summit comes as the administration has loosened export restrictions on advanced chips and pressed for domestic semiconductor production.
Brin, who co-founded Google in 1998, has re-engaged with the company in recent years and appeared at Trump's January inauguration. Su runs AMD, Nvidia's largest competitor in data-center processors, and has expanded the company's role in U.S. government-backed computing projects.
The awards carry the prestige of the federal government's top scientific recognition, typically reserved for researchers whose work reshaped their fields. Trump's decision to grant them to sitting technology executives marks a departure from past practice, when presidents honored academic scientists, inventors and Nobel laureates.
The ceremony reflects the close financial and political ties between the administration and an industry that has sought favorable treatment on tariffs, export rules and federal contracts. Tech companies have pushed for lighter regulation of AI development while the administration has courted their investment in American data centers and factories.
Trump has made the technology sector a centerpiece of his economic messaging, touting pledges of hundreds of billions of dollars in domestic investment from firms including Apple and OpenAI. The summit's name echoes that pitch, casting the current period as a new era of American invention.
