The White House Just Rebranded AI — And It’s Not a Small Thing
Man, this week in Washington was wild. Nearly every major tech CEO showed up — Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei — all under one roof signing what President Donald Trump called a “morally binding” AI safety pledge. At the same time, Trump signed an executive order officially rebranding artificial intelligence as “super intelligence,” which honestly sounds like something out of a sci-fi flick. If you’re still wrapping your head around What is AI, just know this: the definition itself is now being rewritten by the highest office in the land.
Here’s the thing though — it’s not all politics and photo ops. Meta and OpenAI are out there putting friendlier, softer faces on their products while the biggest money in the space still comes from enterprise customers. Meanwhile, people who’ve been tracking how AI Tokens work and how they power the whole economy behind the scenes know that real costs aren’t going away. The AI Models running the show? They cost a fortune to train, and nobody’s hiding that anymore. You know, the economics are getting ugly fast.
Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dug into all this on this week’s episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, covering the safety pledge, the rebrand, the cooling IPO market, and startup moves in maritime tech, supply chains, and space insurance. Also — huge — they’re pushing hard for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 with a live Equity show on the Builders Stage at 9 a.m. Get 25% off tickets with code Equity25.
- The rebrand is real: The White House didn’t just tweak language — they officially shifted the term from “AI” to “super intelligence,” signaling the government sees these systems as operating at a fundamentally different tier than anything that came before.
- Safety pledges without teeth: Trump called the AI safety commitment “morally binding,” but seriously — moral bindings aren’t laws. Companies can sign all day long without facing any real consequences if they cross a line.
- Enterprise cash flow vs. consumer struggles: While tech leaders flex friendly AI product imagery for regular users, the actual revenue engine is still B2B. Consumer AI remains brutal on margins, and the IPO market isn’t exactly warming up either.