Trump awards National Medals of Science and Technology to Musk, Huang, Brin, Su, Dell, Nadella

President Trump on Thursday awarded the National Medal of Science to Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and AMD CEO Lisa Su, and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to Michael Dell and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, at a White House summit titled "Science: A New Golden Age."

Trump singled out Musk in particular, calling him a "national treasure" and a "modern-day Thomas Edison." It is the first time Trump has presented either medal in either of his terms.

The ceremony's optics deserve attention. The recipients are the architects of the AI era: the chips, the models, the platforms and the capital that are reshaping the economy in real time. Honoring them in one room is the administration staking a claim on the technology boom, aligning the presidency with the industry driving the markets to record highs.

And the Musk moment is personal as well as political. Trump and Musk fell out badly earlier this term over the DOGE cuts, a rupture that played out in public and in policy. Calling Musk a national treasure on stage does not erase that history, but it is a deliberate public thaw, and it comes at a moment when the administration wants the tech industry's energy — and its investment — close. The summit's title said what the guest list implied: this White House sees science and technology not as a sector to regulate but as a golden age to claim.