Elon Musk, chief executive and largest shareholder of SpaceX, has decided to rename the company's artificial intelligence division. As reported by El País on October 5, 2026, SpaceXAI will be called SpaceXSI, for “superintelligence.” Musk confirmed it in a post on X, replying to a user on the social network: “Yes, we will make that change.” In another message he added: “No more AI. SI, it's better.”
The change responds to the executive order signed by President Donald Trump, titled “Inaugurating the Era of Superintelligence,” which directs that the term “artificial intelligence” be replaced with “superintelligence” in federal government communications. According to the White House, the word “artificial” makes the technology sound like a copy of human thought, while the new term would better reflect its capabilities.
The order applies to public communications, government websites and official reports. References to laws passed by Congress are exempt until the legislature approves the corresponding amendments. In other words, it is a measure of institutional language, not a change to the legal definition of AI in U.S. legislation.
The political context is key. The order came on the same day Trump hosted the heads of the leading AI companies at the White House for a working lunch. At the end of the meeting, the president signed, together with Sundar Pichai (Google), Elon Musk, Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Jensen Huang (Nvidia) and Greg Brockman (OpenAI), a voluntary agreement to strengthen the sector's safety through internal controls, risk assessments and external reviews.
Days later, on Sunday, October 4, Trump announced the creation of the Super Intelligence Force, a coordinating committee within the White House and the federal government that, according to El País, will report directly to him and his chief of staff, Susie Wiles. The SpaceXAI rebrand fits into the administration's push to change the narrative around AI at a time of growing public distrust.
Xataka described that strategy as an attempt to resolve the trust crisis facing the industry after several incidents involving frontier models, such as the attack on Hugging Face, and the debate over existential risks. Dropping the adjective “artificial” and adding the prefix “super” aims to replace unease with a more ambitious perception of the technology.
For Musk, rebrands are nothing new. SpaceXAI was created in July, shortly after SpaceX's stock market debut. The startup xAI, founded by Musk in 2023, had been acquired by SpaceX in February in a deal valued at $1.25 trillion that consolidated the two companies. Before that, in March 2025, xAI had absorbed X Corp., formerly Twitter. The move to SpaceXSI is therefore the division's second major identity change in a few months.
The move also affects investors. SpaceX listed on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX on June 12, raising $75 billion at a valuation of $1.77 trillion. Renaming a division of that size means updating brands, contracts and communications, although no timeline or costs have been detailed so far.
The gesture also strengthens Musk's relationship with the Trump administration. During this term, the Grok model developed by xAI was contracted for various U.S. government projects, while the businessman served in 2025 as a special adviser to the president.
The decision connects with an idea Musk has championed for years: that cutting-edge technology goes far beyond basic AI. Long before chatbots became popular, he endorsed and helped spread Nick Bostrom's 2014 book “Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies,” which warned that an uncontrollable superintelligence could be more dangerous than nuclear weapons.
Here a paradox emerges. In technical debate, “superintelligence” refers to hypothetical systems that would vastly outperform humans at almost every task, and it is usually associated with extreme risks. Using it as a commercial and governmental synonym for today's AI can confuse the public and blur the difference between currently available tools and the scenarios that worry safety researchers.
It remains to be seen whether other companies will follow suit. So far, no other major lab has announced similar name changes, and the order only binds federal communications. But the speed with which Musk aligned himself with the White House shows how far language has become yet another arena of technology policy.
In short, the switch from SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI is more symbolic than technical: it changes neither products nor models, but it does change the message. It reflects the closeness between Musk and the Trump administration and the official bet on rebranding AI in the midst of a trust crisis. The challenge will be to ensure the new vocabulary does not obscure the underlying debates on safety, transparency and accountability.
