White House rebrands AI as 'super intelligence' via executive order
Original: It’s not AI anymore, it’s ‘super intelligence’ (according to the White House)
Why This Matters
A presidential executive order reshaping official AI terminology signals how central AI branding has become to U.S. tech policy.
President Trump signed an executive order officially rebranding AI as 'super intelligence' and gathered major tech CEOs — including Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, and Anthropic's Dario Amodei — to sign an AI safety pledge he described as 'morally binding,' per a TechCrunch Equity podcast episode published October 2, 2026.
The White House convened what amounts to a who's-who of tech leadership this week, pulling Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei into the same room to sign an AI safety pledge. Trump characterized the pledge as 'morally binding' — a phrase with no legal weight, but plenty of political theater. Separately, Trump signed an executive order formally rebranding artificial intelligence as 'super intelligence,' a semantic shift that reflects the administration's push to frame U.S. AI dominance in grander terms. On the product side, Meta and OpenAI are reportedly softening the public face of their AI offerings, though the biggest AI spending continues to flow through enterprise channels rather than consumers. The TechCrunch Equity team — Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane — unpacked all of this alongside the shifting IPO market and a handful of startup deals in their latest episode. The episode also noted the rough economics of consumer AI, a persistent tension as companies chase mass-market adoption while costs remain high.