Late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs to receive Presidential Medal of Freedom

“These seventeen Americans demonstrate the power of possibilities and embody the soul of the nation — hard work, perseverance, and faith. They have overcome significant obstacles to achieve impressive accomplishments in the arts and sciences, dedicated their lives to advocating for the most vulnerable among us, and acted with bravery to drive change in their communities — and across the world — while blazing trails for generations to come,” the White House said in a statement.

President Biden will present the awards at the White House on Thursday.

Jobs was born in San Francisco and grew up in Silicon Valley with adoptive parents and worked at Atari before founding Apple in 1976 with Steve Wozniak.

Jobs and Wozniak were part of an inaugural group that received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 1985 by then-President Ronald Reagan for their work on the personal computer. That same year, Jobs was pushed out from Apple and went on to fund the creation of Pixar. He returned to a struggling Apple in 1997 and led the Cupertino company to a series of technological hits, including the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad.

Jobs died in 2011 at age 56 from cancer. In his last public appearance, he urged the Cupertino City Council to support a giant circular new headquarters for Apple, which opened in 2017. The complex’s theater is named after him.

After Jobs’s death, his lieutenant Tim Cook took over Apple, which became the first $1 trillion U.S. company in 2018. It’s now worth more than twice that much.

Jobs isn’t the first tech titan to be honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates and his former wife Melinda received the award from then-President Barack Obama in 2016.