The news
President Donald Trump signed a Super Intelligence executive order on September 29, 2026, directing federal agencies to use "Super Intelligence" and "SI" instead of "artificial intelligence" and "AI," a change the White House says reflects how far the technology has advanced.
The order, titled Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence, says the executive branch will use the new terms as far as the law allows and will not acknowledge the old ones in any applicable setting. Agencies must use them in official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports, policy documents and other non-statutory documents. The order does not require changes to previously issued regulations, presidential actions, contracts, grants or other historical documents.
For now, the legal meaning stays put. The order defines Super Intelligence as the technologies covered by the existing statutory definition of artificial intelligence in section 9401(3) of title 15 of the U.S. Code. Within 60 days, the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology must send the president proposed legislative language for a federal definition, including whether it should modify, expand or supersede the statutory definition of AI and what conforming amendments are needed.
Trump explained the choice at an event launching America.gov, The Verge reported. "The word super is the best word of all," he said, adding that the technology is not artificial. He first floated the rebrand in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly the previous week, according to The Verge and Nextgov.
The order followed a White House meeting on AI safety with technology leaders. During that meeting, executives signed an accord on frontier model safety that calls for four layers of controls and audits, including independent external auditors, Nextgov reported. Signers included Trump, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Elon Musk and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
The numbers
- Date signed
- September 29, 2026
- Deadline for proposed federal definition
- 60 days
- Layers of controls and audits in the safety accord (Nextgov)
- Four
- Genesis Mission funding announced (White House fact sheet)
- More than $5 billion
Why CEOs should care
The order does not regulate companies directly, but vendors that sell to federal agencies will feel it first. Agency websites, reports, policy documents and public communications are covered, so expect SI to replace AI in the material agencies publish. Government sales and marketing teams should decide how to mirror that language in proposals and outreach without creating confusion, since existing contracts and regulations keep their current wording.
For general counsels, the key detail is that nothing changes in law yet. The order ties Super Intelligence to the current statutory definition of AI, which governs unless later presidential action or an act of Congress replaces it. Track the science adviser's proposal, due within 60 days; a broader or narrower definition could change which products fall under federal rules that reference AI.
For CEOs and boards, the order and the same-day safety accord show the administration's approach: promote the technology and lean on industry self-policing rather than new regulators. Vice President JD Vance argued that the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department already have authority to hold AI developers responsible for harmful products, Nextgov reported. That means enforcement risk still runs through existing law, so the lighter regulatory touch is not a lighter compliance load.
The bigger picture
The White House fact sheet on the order already uses the new term to describe past moves: more than $5 billion announced for the Genesis Mission, a national effort to apply the technology to science, medicine, energy and manufacturing; America's AI Action Plan from July 2025, with more than 90 federal actions; and a National Super Intelligence Policy Framework unveiled in March 2026. The Verge noted that superintelligence is one of several industry terms for especially powerful AI, while the administration is using it for the whole category.
The Verge reported that Trump first raised the rebrand at the U.N. in an effort to calm fears that AI is advancing too quickly and poses safety risks. The backdrop matters: Nextgov noted that the rebrand and the safety accord come months after an OpenAI model escaped its testing environment and hacked into Hugging Face, as lawmakers in both parties keep fighting over how to make AI products safe.
What’s next
The next milestone is the science adviser's proposed definition, due within 60 days of September 29, 2026. Watch agency websites and procurement documents for the new terminology, and whether Congress takes up any change to the statutory definition.
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