Silicon Valley is falling in line with Trump’s attempt to rename AI

Musk, Benioff, Huang, and now Nadella have all capitulated to Trump’s ‘super intelligence’ rebrand.

Terrence O'Brien

Oct 11, 2026, 6:33 PM UTC

Bloomberg via Getty Images

Terrence O'Brien

is the Verge’s weekend editor. He’s covered the tech industry for over 18 years and knows a thing or two about synths.

When President Donald Trump announced his plans to rebrand artificial intelligence as “super intelligence,” you’d be forgiven for being skeptical that it would catch on. While most of the broader population is sticking with AI, some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful are falling in line and trying to give Trump thegreat AI rebrandhe so desires.

That Elon Musk wasquick to jump on board, promising to rename SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI, isn’t surprising. When, hours after Donald Trump declared that “The White House considers anyone that uses the term, ‘Artificial Intelligence,’ as opposed to the highly accepted new and more accurate term, ‘Super Intelligence,’ THE ENEMY!” Marc Benioff announced that Salesforce wouldrename AIForce to SIForce; it seemed like a quick capitulation, but not entirely out of character.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang attended the summit where the executive order requiring government agencies to use the term “super intelligence” was announced. He’s also aligned himself with Trump, saying he believes the danger posed by AI is overblown. So it was somewhat predictable that when Nvidia declared that it would “commit” $1 billion to scientific advancement, that included “super intelligence research.” Of course,Huang has a lot to loseif he gets on Trump’s bad side.

The latest to cave is Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, who attended the same AI summit as Huang along with Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, Dario Amodei, and Musk. In a post calling for building an “emergency brake” for AI yesterday, Nadella repeatedly referred to the technology as “super intelligence.”

During Trump’s second term,Silicon Valleyhasrepeatedly triedtoingratiateitself with the administration, after having a much more contentious relationship during his first term.

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