Trump gives top science medals to Big Tech donors

President Trump awarded Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Alphabet co-founder Sergey Brin, and AMD CEO Lisa Su the National Medal of Science — the United States’ highest honor for achievement in science — at the Golden Age of American Innovation Summit on Thursday. Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation at the same event.

Together, the honorees have donated nearly $6 billion to efforts tied to Trump and his administration, according to The New Republic. Alphabet and Microsoft donated to the president’s inauguration fund and the White House ballroom; AMD gave to a pro-Trump super PAC; and Michael and Susan Dell pledged $6.25 billion to help fund the Trump Accounts, the administration’s children’s savings program.

Trump said the honorees had helped “pioneer an incredible future for America,” adding that because of them, “we will always be on top. No one else can compete with us.”

Nadella received his medal just after the administration indefinitely suspended Microsoft from the H-1B program, which lets U.S. companies hire skilled foreign workers.

Why it matters

The ceremony underscores how closely some of the biggest names in tech have tied themselves — financially and symbolically — to the Trump administration, even as the same administration imposes policies, like the Microsoft H-1B suspension, that cut against those companies’ own interests.