At an event today in Manhattan and streamed worldwide, the IEEE announced Henry Samueli, one of the two founders of Broadcom, will be the recipient of the organization's top award, the Medal of Honor for 2025. Aside from the recognition and prestige of joining the list of previous winners (including TSMC founder Morris Chang and GPS developer Bradford Parkinson), the award includes a newly expanded $2 million prize.
While a professor at UCLA at the end of the 1980s Samueli and then-PH.D student Henry Nicholas began work on the mixed-signal communications technology that would lead the two to form Broadcom in 1991. Before long, the company would spearhead the global growth of broadband that makes much of our modern internet, communications, and streaming services possible.
"IEEE Medal of Honor Laureate Henry Samueli’s vision and communications technology innovations spurred the development of products used by nearly every person around the world,” said 2025 IEEE President and CEO Kathleen Kramer via the IEEE's press release. “From the billions of consumer smartphones, set-top boxes and tablets, to laptops and IoT devices, Samueli created new and novel ways to power connections and unite humanity.”
The IEEE, or Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, is the world's largest technical professional organization, with the stated goal of "advancing technology for the benefit of humanity."
To that end, the IEEE also prominently praised Samueli's notable charitable contributions. "In addition, his prolific philanthropy has deeply impacted many lives for the better – from generous support of STEM education to a pledge to give away the majority of his money during his lifetime, said K. J. Ray Liu, 2022 IEEE President and CEO. "These contributions are exemplary for technologists, modeling the impact they can have not just on the world they live in, but for those who follow them.”
Broadcom is also integral, both metaphorically and literally, to the story of the Raspberry Pi SBC and the ecosystem that has built up around it. It's no coincidence that Broadcom chips power the more than 61 million units sold as of early 2024.
"The Raspberry Pi is a fascinating story," said Samueli at the NYC event. "It was created by a Broadcom engineer, Eben Upton. And he had this idea that we could take one of our SoC chips that we had built for set-top boxes and modify it slightly and turn it into this mini computer… to stimulate young kids to get into computer science and learn coding."
While Samueli didn't have a direct hand in the development of the Pi, his company makes the chips and fostered an environment where Pi founder and now company CEO Upton could turn an idea into an affordable, largely open-source platform for budding coders and talented makers alike.
Henry Samueli may not be as high-profile as Nvidia's Jensen Huang or AMD's Lisa Su, but there's no denying the many ways his contributions have improved the tech we use every day.
The event today with Samueli and current and previous IEEE CEOs served primarily as the announcement of Medal of Honor award. The organization will hold an award ceremony on April 24th in Tokyo, Japan.
