Americans who opened Google Maps on Monday, Feb. 10, 2025, found the Gulf of Mexico had a new name, a switch Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Google confirmed on its blog.

Days later, the White House barred the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One for keeping the old name, Axios reported. Agreeing cost Google a label, while refusing cost AP its access.

The same playbook now targets a technology we’ve all accepted its old name. On Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026, President Donald Trump hosted tech leaders at the White House, where Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Huang, Dario Amodei, Sundar Pichai, and Greg Brockman signed a voluntary “White House Accord on Super Intelligence,” according to Forbes.

The document commits signers to internal controls, outside audits, and board oversight for their most powerful models.

Also read: Trump’s ‘Super Intelligence’ order rolls through the tech world. But will it last?

The president signed an executive order the same day. The order tells federal agencies to say “Super Intelligence” and “SI” instead of “artificial intelligence” and “AI,” and says the executive branch will not acknowledge the old terms.

It spares private companies, yet its effects have already rolled through tech.

Then the pressure sharpened. On Thursday, Oct. 8, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the White House considers anyone still saying “Artificial Intelligence” to be “THE ENEMY,” Axios reported. He never said what that means.

Salesforce (CRM) CEO Marc Benioff answered with 11 pointed words the next day.

“The era of Super Intelligence is here. AIForce is officially SIForce,” he wrote on X (the former Twitter) on Friday, Oct. 9. Those words reveal the new pressure on tech giants: the president’s vocabulary is now a business decision.

Salesforce renamed its flagship launch within 24 days

Salesforce unveiled AIforce at Dreamforce on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026, so the name lasted 24 days. AIforce lets workers and software agents pull Salesforce data and trigger its workflows from inside tools like Anthropic’s Claude and Slack, without opening Salesforce itself.

Salesforce says every request follows a customer’s existing permissions, and model providers keep none of the data.

Nothing about that machinery needed a new name. Benioff’s post mentioned no change to features, pricing, or availability, which makes the rename look purely cosmetic.

Relabeling is routine at Salesforce. It added “Agentforce” to about two dozen product names in October 2025, then began stripping it from some in September 2026, The Information reported.

Four days after the Dreamforce launch, President Trump proposed an “AI force” and an AI czar in a Truth Social post, TechRadar noted. A flagship product sharing a name with a proposed White House enforcement body was never going to age well.

Salesforce changed the name of AIforce to SIForce on Oct. 9, 2026, just 24 days after launch, a day after President Trump called anyone using the term AI “THE ENEMY.”

Benjamin Fanjoy / Getty Images

Washington, not the customer, is the audience for super intelligence (SI)

Salesforce is not alone. SpaceX (SPCX) CEO Elon Musk said on Sunday, Oct. 4, that he would rename the company’s AI unit SpaceXSI, Reuters reported. Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang now calls data centers “super intelligence factories,” according to Axios.

The public is not following. A YouGov poll of 21,449 U.S. adults published Monday, Sept. 28, found that 53% preferred the term “artificial intelligence,” while 9% favored “super intelligence.”

That gap is the tell. AI company representatives told Axios they would use “SI” with the president and federal agencies, but doubted it would spread further.

For Salesforce, Washington is a paying customer. Its OneGov agreement with the General Services Administration, signed on Monday, May 19, 2025, covers every federal agency.

When those agencies cannot acknowledge “AI,” a product called AIforce turns awkward in briefings and procurement talks. The rename is cheap insurance, bought despite Benioff never signing the accord.

CRM stock has not traded on the AI rename yet

Salesforce makes customer relationship management software, which companies use to track sales and service, making it a bellwether for enterprise software spending.

Its shares closed at $229.13 on Friday, Oct. 9, up 0.58%, according to Stock Analysis. Benioff posted after the closing bell, the post’s timestamp shows, so Monday, Oct. 12, brings the first reaction.

Wall Street remains constructive. The 56 analysts tracked by Stock Analysis rate the stock a consensus Buy with an average price target of $283.36, implying about 24% upside. That gap suggests analysts think the market still underrates Salesforce’s growth.

The S&P 500 software and services index has rebounded after losing more than 26% between late January and its April low, Reuters reported, naming Salesforce among the earnings standouts behind the recovery.

A product rename surely changes none of those numbers.

More Salesforce:

  • Salesforce unveils AIforce as Benioff takes shot at Microsoft
  • Salesforce CEO warns AI companies not to repeat this costly mistake
  • Tech titan unveils surprising new role for Slack in AI expansion

Product names now carry political risk

Brand names used to carry trademark and marketing risk. Now they carry political risk, and AIforce shows how fast it bites.

The executive order gives the White House science adviser 60 days to propose a federal legal definition of the term, which points to late November. If “SI” moves from press releases into statute, procurement language could follow, and early adopters such as Salesforce will have paid the least to stay on the right side of Washington’s dictionary.

Will “SI” be widely adopted by you and me? That’s a question only time can reveal.

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