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- President Trump is awarding a number of top tech executives with medals at a science summit on Thursday.
- Elon Musk, Michael Dell, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Google co-founder Sergey Brin are among those slated to receive awards.
- The recipients all contributed financially, in some capacity, to President Trump or Republican campaigns and causes.
US President Donald Trump and SpaceX Founder and CEO Elon Musk speak to the media at the White House driveway following a luncheon for tech leaders in the East Room, in Washington, D.C., US, Sept. 29, 2026. Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
President Donald Trump is awarding medals to a number of leading tech executives, including Elon Musk and Michael Dell, at a science summit on Thursday, CNBC has confirmed.
Musk, who leads SpaceX and Tesla, is receiving the National Medal of Science, as are Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su, according to the White House. Dell and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will be given the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
The event is titled Science: A New Golden Age Summit. Fox News was first to report on it.
“The Trump Administration is grateful for the contributions of these incredible leaders in science and technology,” Liz Huston, White House assistant press secretary said, in an emailed statement. “These recipients are helping ensure America keeps leading the world in innovation.”
The summit comes a little over a week after Trump hosted a lunch at the White House focused on artificial intelligence that included several of those executives and many others in the industry. Trump told reporters after the gathering that he signed a “morally binding” document with the tech leaders, as calls for a slowdown in the development of AI models reached a fever pitch.
Each of the awards recipients at Thursday’s summit has financially contributed, in some capacity, to President Trump or Republican campaigns and causes.
Musk was Trump’s biggest financial backer in the 2024 election cycle, contributing over $290 million, and then led an effort to slash the federal workforce as a special government employee of the Trump administration.
Brin attended Trump’s inauguration and contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Republican National Committee in 2025. Huang donated to a fund to build Trump’s White House ballroom, and Nvidia contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration ceremony.
Dell is a longtime Trump donor. Along with his wife Susan, he committed $6.25 billion to seed Trump Accounts designed to jumpstart savings for children in the U.S. AMD is also contributing to Trump funds.
According to his most recent disclosure, Trump bought or sold shares in SpaceX, Tesla, Nvidia, Microsoft, AMD and Google parent Alphabet as recently as July.
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