Elon Musk is going to rebrand his 3-month-old company because Trump says so

FastCompany: ”No more AI. SI, it’s better,” said Elon Musk after announcing that he is rebranding his newly-branded artificial intelligence division: SpaceXAI will become SpaceXSI, replacing the acronym “AI” with “SI”, which stands for “super intelligence.” His X post came after a fanboy asked him if he was going to follow President Donald Trump’s suggestion to Silicon Valley moguls, asking them to use “super intelligence.” “Artificial intelligence sounds fake,” Trump said after a September 24th dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping. According to Trump, Xi “ seemed” to like the term .

Musk’s shift closely follows a federal order signed on September 29 by Trump. Titled “Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence,” the President directed government agencies to change all mentions of AI to “SI.” Superintelligence is not a new concept for Musk. He first spoke about the term back in 2014 , when he referenced a book titled Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies , by Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom. The book talked about AI being a “recursive digital intelligence” that will surpass humans. “Hope we’re not just the biological boot loader for digital superintelligence.

Unfortunately, that is increasingly probable,” Musk said on then Twitter. Bostrom had spoken with Musk for the book and even thanked him in the acknowledgments. This latest rebrand comes barely three months after Musk folded his startup xAI into SpaceX, debuting the SpaceXAI rebrand in July 2026. That restructuring absorbed xAI as a subsidiary, resulting in a train crash of a composite wordmark that grafted a condensed, slanted “AI” appendage underneath the rocket trail of the primary SpaceX logo ( even Grok hated that logo ).

Trump’s observation that “artificial” sounds “fake” might be overly simplistic, but it hits on a marketing truth that Silicon Valley has been slow to acknowledge. To many people, the initials “AI” have accumulated massive, toxic brand baggage. Job theft , energy-guzzling , water-wasting , creative strip-mining , and an endless flood of digital slop . It’s unlikely that a “super intelligence” switcheroo could wholesale launder the technology’s reputation, though it’s true that “artificial” connotes counterfeit and hollow, while “super” suggests limitless capability. Tech leaders know the public is sick of AI, so why not sell them SI instead?

The pivot offers one obvious possible win for Musk: A swift mercy killing to that atrocious SpaceXAI frankenlogo. Whether squeezing an “SI” under the rocket trail turns out any better remains to be seen, but I have a hard time imagining it can look worse.

The rebranding of a high-profile company like SpaceX under the influence of a public figure like Trump highlights the significant impact of public perception on branding, making it relevant and impactful for brand strategists.