❯ Trump awards the National Medal of Science to Musk, Brin, Huang and Su, and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to Nadella and Dell

All six honorees run tech companiesUS President Donald Trump presented two medals on October 8 at the Science: A New Golden Age Summit in Washington. The list published by the White House shows Elon Musk, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and AMD’s Lisa Su received the National Medal of Science, while Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Dell founder Michael Dell received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.

The citations are about computeThe White House cited Huang for advancing the graphics processing unit into a general-purpose computing architecture and transforming massively parallel computation, and Su for innovations in processor architecture and chiplet-based integration that powered the world’s first exascale supercomputer. The National Medal of Science has been bestowed by the president since 1963; the National Medal of Technology and Innovation was first awarded in 1985.

Another announcement the same dayAccording to NBC News, hours before the ceremony Vice President JD Vance announced the administration would suspend Microsoft and several other companies from a program that lets foreign workers apply for green cards, even as Microsoft’s CEO was a guest of honor. A White House spokesperson thanked the recipients and said they help keep America leading in innovation.

Executives on the science podiumThe two medals are the highest US honors in science and technology, and this time all six recipients are founders or heads of technology companies, four of them directly in chips, servers or cloud computing. The White House release repeatedly uses the term “super intelligence” and recognizes computing infrastructure as a scientific achievement.

▮ SIGNALWhen the National Medal of Science goes to people who make chips and build data centers, the official definition of a scientific contribution has come to include the supply of compute.