Trump to Award Science Medals to Musk, Huang; Altman, Amodei Omitted

President Donald Trump is set to present Elon Musk with the National Medal of Science on Thursday. Musk is among six technology executives being recognized, but OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei, two of the most prominent AI lab leaders, are absent from the list.

These medals represent the top U.S. honors for science and technology. Trump has not awarded either during his two presidencies.

Trump's Science and Technology Medal Winners

Elon Musk, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and AMD CEO Lisa Su are set to get the science medal. Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will be awarded the technology medal.

The ceremony will take place at the White House's "Science: A New Golden Age Summit." The summit's theme is superintelligence, defined as artificial intelligence that surpasses human performance on most tasks.

"These recipients are helping ensure America keeps leading the world in innovation," White House spokesperson Liz Huston told Fox.

The medal also marks Musk's reconciliation with Trump. The two parted ways in 2025 when Musk described Trump's tax bill as a "disgusting abomination." Musk now co-heads the Pentagon's Project Meridian study on future warfare.

Reasons Altman and Amodei Are Not on the List

The White House offered no explanation for the selections, only listing the six recipients.

President Trump is set to award six prominent technology leaders the nation's highest science and technology honors Thursday during the White House's "Science: A New Golden Age Summit".

• National Medal of Science: Elon Musk, CEO of $TSLA Tesla and $SPCX SpaceX; Sergey Brin,…

— Jesse Cohen (@JesseCohenInv) October 7, 2026

The announcement came during the same week that OpenAI published proofs for hundreds of unsolved math problems, generated by an internal ChatGPT model. Altman stated that AI is ushering in a "new era of discovery."

Anthropic has had a more difficult relationship with the U.S. government. In March, the Pentagon classified it as a supply-chain risk after the company declined to allow its Claude models to be used in autonomous weapons. An appeals court upheld the Pentagon's blacklisting of Anthropic in September, just days before Trump held a dinner with Amodei.

Altman did not attend Trump's AI luncheon on September 29, opting instead to go to OpenAI's own conference, with president Greg Brockman representing the company. Musk, Nadella, and Su were present at the luncheon.

Amodei has called for a more cautious approach to developing the most advanced AI. Trump has dismissed that stance, claiming it benefits China, which has reduced the U.S. AI advantage to 3% on benchmark metrics, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

Thursday's ceremony will feature executives from the chip, cloud, and aerospace sectors. The leaders of the companies that developed ChatGPT and Claude will not be on stage.