Elon Musk to rebrand SpaceXAI as SpaceXSI after Trump orders government to stop saying 'AI'

American billionaire Elon Musk said on Sunday that SpaceXAI, the artificial intelligence unit of SpaceX that makes the Grok chatbot, will be renamed SpaceXSI, adopting the "Super Intelligence" label that President Donald Trump ordered the federal government to use in place of "AI" last week.

"No more AI," Musk wrote in a string of posts on X early Sunday. "SI. It's better." He added that "SpaceX is a super intelligence company." When a user asked whether there was "any possibility of renaming to SpaceXSI," he replied: "Yes, we will make that change."

It would be the business's third name since February. Musk founded it as xAI in 2023 to compete with OpenAI; SpaceX acquired it this year in an all-stock deal that valued the AI company at about $250 billion and folded it into the rocket maker ahead of SpaceX's June listing; in July it was rebranded SpaceXAI with a new logo. As of Sunday the company's website and X account still carried that name, and Musk gave no timeline or detail on whether the change would be a legal renaming or a branding update, or how it would apply to Grok.

The trigger was political. On Sept. 29, the day Musk and five other AI executives signed a voluntary safety accord at the White House, Trump signed an executive order directing executive-branch agencies to use "Super Intelligence" and "SI" instead of "artificial intelligence" and "AI" on websites, policy documents and press releases.

The order defines the new term by reference to the existing statutory definition of AI, does not alter past regulations or contracts, and gives the White House science adviser 60 days to propose legislation creating a federal definition of "Super Intelligence." A White House fact sheet said the change recognizes "the continuously advancing technological frontier and the limitless promise it offers the American people." Trump himself has framed it as branding.

On Saturday Trump went further, announcing a Super Intelligence Force to coordinate the government's approach to the technology and its engagement with "Consumers, Public Interest Groups, Religious Organizations, Critical Infrastructure Providers, and Super Intelligence Companies." Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton will lead it, with Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson, Pentagon research chief Emil Michael and Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor. It reports to Trump and chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Musk is the first AI chief executive to say he will rename a company to fit. Gizmodo described his posts as a full surrender to Trump's vocabulary; Musk followed them with the cover of philosopher Nick Bostrom's 2014 book "Superintelligence," a term researchers have reserved for hypothetical systems that outperform humans across every domain, not for products that exist today. Whether OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or Meta follow is unknown; none has announced a change.

The alignment runs deeper than a name. Musk left the White House in acrimony in 2025 after running the Department of Government Efficiency, then rebuilt the relationship: a reported $100 million midterm pledge in August, a seat at the Sept. 29 accord, co-leadership of a Pentagon study on the future of warfare announced last Wednesday, and reported talks for SpaceX to supply billions of dollars of AI computing capacity to the Defense Department. SpaceXAI's Grok already holds government contracts.

A name change on X is not a name change in a filing, and Musk has a record of announcing on his platform ahead of delivery. But the direction is clear: the world's richest man has decided that what his AI company is called is a question for the president.