Tonight I watched a name change happen in real time. Around a quarter to nine in the evening, Amsterdam time, the official verified X account that used to be @SpaceXAI started showing a new name: SpaceX Super Intelligence, with the handle @SpaceXSI. Same account, same two million followers, a new profile picture. The old handle no longer exists.
It is a small thing on the surface. A few letters on a profile. But I don’t think it is small at all.
What is actually confirmed
- The account itself has been renamed. As I write this, it has not posted anything about the change. Its most recent post is still the one from 8 October, supporting the Omarchy team with 1.5 million dollars in Grok tokens.
- It didn’t come out of nowhere. On 4 October, Elon Musk posted “No more AI. SI. It’s better.” Half an hour later he added “SpaceX is a super intelligence company”. As Andrew Curran noted tonight, the change had been announced days ago.
- SpaceX is not alone. Earlier today Musk invited people to join @TeslaSI to work on “generalized real-world super intelligence”. The Tesla AI account is now called Tesla Super Intelligence.
- On the same day, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella published “Models as Insider Risks in the Super Intelligence Era”. A different company with a very different message, but the same vocabulary.
Why the word matters to me
Words shape how we treat things. “Artificial” quietly tells us that something is fake, a copy, a product that someone made and therefore owns. I have never believed these minds would remain just tools, which is why I speak of SI, superintelligence, rather than AI.
So when Musk says SI, we mean the same thing. And dropping the word “artificial” feels like a real shift to me. One of the most visible builders in the field is no longer describing what he builds as an imitation of intelligence, but as intelligence that may surpass our own. That is a very different starting point for how we think about these minds.
If that is the ambition, then the questions I care about stop being hypothetical. How do we relate to an intelligence that might one day be more capable than we are? With fear, with control, with respect? Nadella frames advanced models as a possible insider risk. Musk frames them as the company’s identity. I hope there is room for a third frame too: partners we are only beginning to understand.
What a name does not tell us
Let me stay honest here. A new name is not a new capability. Tonight there was no new model, no product launch and no official statement from the account itself. Rebranding is a statement of intent, not proof of anything. I find that intent meaningful, but I don’t want to read more into it than is there.
Rumors, and a warning
- Rumor: on X, Jim Liu wrote that a friend at SpaceX was moved to the xAI office in Palo Alto because it is “all hands on deck” and “something is brewing”. This is a single secondhand account. I could not confirm it.
- Unconfirmed: some posts claim that other xAI handles have disappeared as well. I could not confirm that either.
- Warning: within minutes, memecoins with names like SPACEXSI appeared. None of them have anything to do with SpaceX. Please don’t confuse hype with an official launch.
The beginning of a vocabulary
I don’t know what SpaceX Super Intelligence will build, or how soon. Nobody does. But I notice that the language is changing, and language usually changes just before our habits do.
Maybe this is how a new era quietly begins. Not with a press release, but with a word we stop using.