Following President Donald Trump’s directive last month to replace the term "artificial intelligence" with "super intelligence" in government discourse, tech leaders Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg embraced this new terminology on their third-quarter earnings calls. Trump announced the change during a White House AI industry luncheon on September 29, emphasizing the term to promote AI growth with minimal regulation. Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla followed suit, renaming Tesla’s AI division to SpaceXSI and referring to their humanoid robot technology as involving “super intelligence.” Zuckerberg also echoed this language in Meta’s earnings call, highlighting Meta’s existing commitment to “personal superintelligence” via its Meta Superintelligence Labs unit, established last year.

Despite Musk and Zuckerberg’s public adoption of Trump’s vocabulary, CEOs of other major tech firms including Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet maintained use of the term “AI” on their recent earnings calls. Amazon’s Andy Jassy used the acronym extensively, while Microsoft’s Satya Nadella framed AI as a central focus for empowering people and delivering tangible outcomes. Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai similarly emphasized the role of AI investments in driving growth. Notwithstanding the reluctance among some executives to fully relinquish the traditional nomenclature, references to “super intelligence” are incrementally appearing across corporate reports; for example, Microsoft’s latest annual report prominently features the term, reflecting its growing influence in official communications.

Industry leaders such as IBM’s Arvind Krishna and Intel’s Lip-Bu Tan incorporated both "AI" and “super intelligence” in recent presentations, indicating a transitional phase in the adoption of the president’s preferred term. Meanwhile, some executives like Palo Alto Networks’ Nikesh Arora and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang have publicly praised the White House’s push for the "super intelligence" concept. Huang, who has been a vocal ally of Trump in the AI safety debate, hailed the "White House Accord on Super Intelligence" as offering transformative possibilities for discovery, productivity, and security. This alignment between select tech CEOs and the Trump administration occurs amid the political headwinds facing the president ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Trump’s rebranding effort reflects broader political and cultural initiatives by his administration to reshape the narrative around AI development and governance. With the Republican Party facing potential losses in Congress and Trump’s economic approval rating at a historic low, the endorsement of “super intelligence” by high-profile tech figures is seen as both a symbolic and strategic gesture in this context. While many CEOs have yet to fully adopt the new terminology, the integration of “super intelligence” into formal documents and corporate language signals a shifting discourse that may influence how AI technologies are perceived and regulated in the coming years.