The ceremony took place on October 8, 2026, at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington during the Science: A New Golden Age Summit. President Donald Trump presented the National Medal of Science to Elon Musk for engineering achievements that expanded the frontiers of space exploration, intelligent systems, and communications.
Alongside Musk, the National Medal of Science was awarded to Google co-founder Sergey Brin for information processing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang for graphics processors and parallel computing, and AMD CEO Lisa Su for semiconductor design and high-performance computing systems.
Additionally, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. These awards recognize contributions to industry and technological development.
The National Medal of Science was established by Congress in 1959 and first awarded in 1963. The National Medal of Technology and Innovation was introduced later, with the first presentation occurring in 1985.
