Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg used the White House’s preferred term “super intelligence” on their latest earnings calls, while the chief executives of Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet kept saying AI, CNBC reported on 30 October 2026. The split shows up one month after President Donald Trump told executive branch departments and agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” with the new phrase.
According to CNBC, Trump issued the order on 29 September while hosting an AI luncheon for industry leaders at the White House. This week he posted on Truth Social that AI and artificial intelligence are banned from “all relevant documents” and “everything else.”
Musk went furthest. CNBC says he renamed the AI division of his rocket company SpaceXSI earlier in October. Asked on Tesla’s call about humanoid robots, he said some of them “look very impressive, but they’re not really using any kind of advanced AI or SI.” On Meta’s 21 October call, Zuckerberg stressed the company’s “goal of delivering personal superintelligence to everyone.” CNBC points out that Meta set up Meta Superintelligence Labs last year, so the phrase cost Zuckerberg little.
The other big names stayed put. On Thursday, Amazon’s Andy Jassy used the acronym “AI” more than a dozen times in his opening remarks, by CNBC’s count. Satya Nadella told Microsoft’s call a day earlier that one of three priorities at Microsoft is “designing AI to empower people.” Sundar Pichai opened Alphabet’s commentary by saying the company’s “AI investments are driving increased usage and overall user growth.”
CNBC is careful to say this is not open defiance. Microsoft’s annual report, which the company filed a week ago, uses the term eight times, beginning with Nadella’s letter to shareholders. IBM’s Arvind Krishna, who skipped the September lunch, used “SI” alongside AI on his call. Intel’s Lip-Bu Tan blamed the chip supply shortage on “the unprecedented demand for super intelligence.”
Several executives have embraced the phrase in public. CNBC notes that Nikesh Arora, who runs Palo Alto Networks, called the White House meeting “an epic moment” in a post on X and has repeatedly said SI on CNBC. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, whom CNBC describes as the president’s strongest backer in the debate over AI safety, praised the “White House Accord on Super Intelligence” and wrote that the technology’s future “will be shaped not only by what it can do, but by the confidence it earns.”
The timing is political. CNBC ties the rebrand to next week’s midterm elections, with Republicans at risk of losing both the House and the Senate. The outlet also reports that tech leaders gave money toward Trump’s inauguration events and his White House ballroom plan, and that some have dropped diversity programs the president opposed.
Anyone writing investor decks, regulatory filings or federal sales material now has a vocabulary problem that cuts both ways. A government buyer may start searching for “super intelligence” in procurement language, and a commercial customer may not recognize it. The earnings calls CNBC reviewed suggest the largest companies are hedging with both terms, and the next round of reports will show whether the mix tips.
Reported by CNBC (Samantha Subin and Isabel O’Brien) on 30 October 2026.
