Texas Teen Ahmed Mohamed Arrested for Clock Gets Warm Welcome From Silicon Valley
— -- The tech community has a message for Ahmed Mohamed, the the tech savvy Texas teen who was arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school: Just keep building.
Mohamed, a freshman at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas, was taken into police custody on Monday when his homemade digital clock was mistaken for a bomb by school officials and police. Since the incident, Mohamed has been fielding a slew of invitations from some of the biggest names in the tech world.
"Having the skill and ambition to build something cool should lead to applause, not arrest. The future belongs to people like Ahmed," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote. "Ahmed, if you ever want to come by Facebook, I'd love to meet you. Keep building."
While Ahmed has a busy schedule ahead of him, including a meeting with President Obama, the offers from the tech community haven't stopped there. Twitter offered him an internship.
Google extended Mohamed an invitation to its science fair and said he'd be welcome to show off the clock he built too. (Mohamed told Good Morning America he hasn't been given back the device yet.)
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian offered to help introduce Mohamed to some of his friends in the science world and said he wanted to talk with the teen about the possibility of an internship for him at Reddit.
The team at location discovery app Foursquare also shared their support for Ahmed's curiosity and encouraged him to "never stop inventing the future."
Of all the invitations Mohamed has received, there's one that trumps them all. The teen told "Good Morning America" today he was most excited to hear from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"I dream of going there," he said.
