US President Donald Trump presented Elon Musk with the country’s highest science honour on Thursday, marking the billionaire entrepreneur’s full return to the president’s circle following their bitter fallout last year according to NDTV.
Six leading American technology figures received prestigious awards from Trump during a ceremony at a Washington peace institute that was recently renamed after the president.
However, attention centred on Musk, the billionaire head of SpaceX and Tesla, following his acrimonious departure from Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), where he had led efforts to cut government spending.
Trump described Musk as a “national treasure”, adding that “Elon is our modern-day Thomas Edison,” in reference to the American inventor credited with developing the practical light bulb.
“Elon, I want to congratulate you. You’re my friend, and all of that, but you are a very, very special guy,” Trump said at the event, titled “Science: A New Golden Age”.
Alongside Musk, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang and AMD chief executive Lisa Su received the National Medal of Science from Trump.
Technology entrepreneur Michael Dell and Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella were awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the highest American honour in their respective field.
Trump and Musk maintained a cordial but somewhat awkward atmosphere during Thursday’s ceremony. The president patted the billionaire on the back and presented him with a wooden case containing his medal, although the pair largely avoided eye contact.
The occasion marked a sharp contrast with May 2025, when Musk’s brief and turbulent involvement with DOGE collapsed following disagreements over the White House’s “utterly insane” tax and spending bill.
Musk, the largest donor to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, had spent months working from a small office within the White House complex as DOGE pursued sweeping cuts to federal agencies and the government workforce.
He regularly appeared alongside Trump at cabinet meetings and once brought his young son, X, into the Oval Office with the president.
After their relationship deteriorated, tensions between the world’s most powerful political leader and its richest individual escalated rapidly.
Trump threatened to deport Musk, who was born in South Africa, while Musk, owner of the social media platform X, alleged that Trump had links to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
However, Musk has gradually returned to Trump’s circle in recent months, while SpaceX’s rockets have continued to play a crucial role in the US space and defence programmes.
He attended Trump’s state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping in September and participated in discussions on artificial intelligence at the White House last week.
During the meeting, Musk, Huang and other technology leaders pledged to introduce voluntary safeguards against potential threats posed by artificial intelligence.
Trump has rejected calls for government oversight, dismissing warnings that AI could threaten humanity and arguing that the technology is essential to the “Golden Age” of the American economy during his second term.
Earlier on Thursday, Trump warned that anyone who refused to use the term “super intelligence” — which he wants people to adopt instead of AI — would be treated as “THE ENEMY.”
During the medal ceremony, Trump himself received a framed National Medal of Science awarded posthumously to his late uncle, John Trump, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
His uncle, who died in 1983, frequently features in the president’s speeches.
The 80-year-old president often claims he inherited what he describes as the “highest of IQs” from his uncle, attributing it to “good genes.”