Elon Musk and Marc Benioff Adopt Trump's Push to Rename AI as Super Intelligence

Salesforce is renaming its AIForce platform SIForce, while Elon Musk has pledged to change SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI following Donald Trump's push to replace artificial intelligence with super intelligence in federal communications.

Elon Musk and Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff are adopting new terminology for artificial intelligence-related businesses and products as US President Donald Trump pushes to replace the term “artificial intelligence” with “super intelligence”.

Benioff announced that Salesforce's AIForce platform would become SIForce, while Musk has pledged to rename SpaceXAI as SpaceXSI. The developments have brought Trump's terminology campaign beyond government communications and into the branding choices of prominent technology executives.

“The era of Super Intelligence is here. AIForce is officially SIForce,” Benioff wrote in a post on X, announcing the change to Salesforce's agent platform.

The announcements follow an executive order signed by Trump on September 29, 2026, directing federal departments and agencies to use “Super Intelligence” and “SI” instead of “Artificial Intelligence” and “AI” in official communications and other applicable government materials.

The order does not require private companies to adopt the terminology, making the decisions by Benioff and Musk notable examples of the language spreading into corporate branding.

What Trump's executive order says

Trump's executive order, titled Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence, argues that the capabilities of modern AI systems have advanced beyond what the original terminology was intended to describe.

The document directs executive departments and agencies, to the extent permitted by law, to use “Super Intelligence” and “SI” in official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports, policy documents and other non-statutory materials.

It also instructs the administration's science and technology adviser to prepare proposed legislative language establishing a federal definition of the new terminology.

The policy is therefore more than a suggested change in wording for government staff, although it does not automatically change the names used by private technology companies. The order also defines the terms for its own implementation by reference to the existing statutory definition of artificial intelligence, pending further action.

Trump has subsequently used increasingly forceful language to promote the change. In a post on Truth Social, he described people who continued to use “Artificial Intelligence” rather than “Super Intelligence” as “THE ENEMY”.

That rhetoric has intensified attention on the terminology, particularly as some technology executives have begun incorporating the preferred wording into their own announcements.

Salesforce and SpaceX make branding changes

Benioff's announcement concerns AIForce, Salesforce's agent platform, rather than a renaming of Salesforce itself. The change illustrates how Trump's preferred terminology is being adopted in product branding by a major software company.

Musk, meanwhile, has pledged to rename SpaceXAI as SpaceXSI, with the company's X account already changed according to reporting by Business Insider. The move follows the president's campaign to promote “super intelligence” as the preferred label for the technology.

Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella has also used the capitalised phrase “Super Intelligence” in a recent public post about AI model containment and governance. His wording adds another prominent technology leader to the discussion, although using the phrase does not by itself establish a formal corporate rebrand.

The developments raise questions about whether other businesses with AI in their product or company names will make similar changes. They also demonstrate how political terminology can influence corporate communications even when a government directive does not legally compel private firms to follow it.

Does super intelligence mean the same thing as AI?

The terminology has a significant technical distinction. Artificial intelligence is the established umbrella term for systems that perform tasks associated with human intelligence, including generating text, analysing information and recognising patterns.

Superintelligence, by contrast, is generally used to describe a hypothetical or advanced level of intelligence that exceeds human capabilities across a broad range of tasks. Replacing the name of an existing product does not demonstrate that the system has reached that level.

Trump's executive order uses “Super Intelligence” as a replacement term for AI within the federal government's communications, while also calling for a future federal definition reflecting the capabilities described in the document. That policy choice should not be confused with an independent scientific finding that all current AI systems qualify as superintelligent.

The distinction matters because language can shape how people understand emerging technologies. A new label may signal the administration's view of the industry's progress, but it does not change the underlying capabilities of a product or resolve questions about its accuracy, safety and limitations.

For technology companies, the shift also presents a branding decision: whether to retain familiar terminology or adopt language increasingly associated with the administration's preferred description of the sector.

For now, the moves by Musk and Benioff show that Trump's rebranding campaign is influencing some high-profile corporate communications, even as the established term artificial intelligence continues to be widely used across the industry.