Which Tech Companies Started Using Trump’s Phrase ‘Super Intelligence’?

November 1, 2026

CNBC reports:

A month after President Donald Trump ordered that “super intelligence” replace the term artificial intelligence within executive branch departments and agencies, his leading tech allies, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, followed suit on earnings calls. Their fellow tech CEOs were less eager to do the same… SpaceX and Tesla adhered to Trump’s wishes on earnings calls last week after Musk, earlier in October, changed the name of his rocket company’s AI division to SpaceXSI. Speaking on Tesla’s call about his work on humanoid robots, Musk said, “Some of them look very impressive, but they’re not really using any kind of advanced AI or SI.” Zuckerberg was equally compliant on Meta’s earnings call on Oct. 21, emphasizing his company’s “goal of delivering personal superintelligence to everyone.” However, Meta was already using the term, having created a unit called Meta Superintelligence Labs last year….

[Some other tech CEOs are holding out.] Amazon CEO Andy Jassy peppered his call with use of “AI” on Thursday, uttering the abbreviation well over a dozen times in his introductory remarks. A day earlier, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said one of the company’s three points of focus is “designing AI to empower people.” And Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai was seconds into his quarterly earnings commentary when he said the search giant’s “AI investments are driving increased usage and overall user growth….”

Trump’s preferred term is seeping into other correspondence and documents. Microsoft’s annual report, filed last week, included eight mentions of “super intelligence,” starting at the top of the letter to shareholders…
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, who didn’t attend Trump’s September lunch, used “SI” alongside “AI” during his company’s earnings call last week…. Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of chipmaker Intel, said Thursday the supply shortage the chip industry is navigating has been “driven by the unprecedented demand for super intelligence.”

Some in the tech industry have been explicit in their support of Trump’s terminology ahead of their forthcoming earnings reports next month. Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora repeatedly referred to “SI” on CNBC, and posted on X on Sept. 30, “The meeting at the WH on SI was an epic moment….” Like Arora, [Nvidia CEO Jensen] Huang took to X after last month’s AI meeting to praise the “White House Accord on Super Intelligence.”