Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been awarded the National Medal of Science for transforming the graphics processing unit (GPU) from a gaming chip into a powerful computing platform that has become the foundation for artificial intelligence and cutting-edge scientific research.
Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been awarded the National Medal of Science for transforming the graphics processing unit (GPU) from a gaming chip into a powerful computing platform that has become the foundation for artificial intelligence and cutting-edge scientific research.
Huang was presented with the award by President Donald Trump during a technology summit at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, TechSpot reports .
For years, GPUs were designed solely for rendering images on a screen. But under the leadership of Jensen Huang, Nvidia created a massively parallel computing architecture that transformed GPUs into a universal platform. This solution gave scientists and developers the power they needed to make breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.
In addition to the head of Nvidia, the National Medal of Science was awarded at the same event to:
Lisa Su is the CEO of AMD;
Sergey Brin — co-founder of Google;
Elon Musk is the founder of SpaceX and xAI.
In addition, Dell founder Michael Dell and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella were awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, a separate US government award.
The Washington summit was marked not only by awards but also by large-scale investment announcements. Eleven leading technology companies pledged a total of $2.4 billion in AI tools and computing credits to support the government's Genesis Mission, an initiative designed to accelerate scientific discovery through artificial intelligence.
Nvidia made the largest contribution, declaring an investment of $1 billion over five years to support scientific research.
The National Medal of Science is the highest U.S. government award in the field of science, awarded since 1963. For Jensen Huang, this recognition was the continuation of a series of prestigious awards after receiving the IEEE Medal of Honor in 2026 and the Elizabeth II Prize in Engineering in 2025.
