Elon Musk’s latest AI venture, Macrohard, takes a playful swipe at Microsoft while aiming to compete in AI‑driven software development.
As Windows Central reports, Elon Musk is doubling down on his efforts in the generative AI landscape. On top of his xAI company, which recently acquired X (formerly Twitter) for $33 billion, the billionaire announced plans to build “a purely AI software company” called Macrohard.
Musk made the announcement weeks after xAI registered the Macrohard trademark with the US Patent Office. Last month, he also said he was creating a “multi-agent AI software company” that would use xAI’s Grok chatbot. (In 2021, he also tweeted: “Macrohard >> Microsoft.”)
The goal is to spawn “hundreds of specialized coding and image/video generation /understanding agents all working together,” he wrote. The same AI agents can then emulate human users “interacting with the software in virtual machines until the result is excellent.” “This is a macro challenge and a hard problem with stiff competition! Can you guess the name of this company?” he wrote at the time.
He made the announcement on Friday via tweet on X while asking professionals in the field to join xAI and help build the company. “It’s a tongue-in-cheek name, but the project is very real!” Musk added. “In principle, given that software companies like Microsoft do not themselves manufacture any physical hardware, it should be possible to simulate them entirely with AI.”
The announcement has received mixed reactions across social media, going, shall we say, “Die Hard” with memes?
However, Elon Musk isn’t entirely right about Microsoft being entirely a software company. While Microsoft is well known for its development of software like Windows and Microsoft 365 Office, which have been broadly adopted by users across the world over the years, the company has also dabbled in hardware development, including computing, gaming, and mobile hardware (RIP Windows Phone).
But Musk isn’t off base entirely either. A lot of the company’s hardware and services have shipped to the Microsoft graveyard prematurely. As indicated by the Windows Central Executive Editor, Jez Corden, while critiquing Microsoft’s lack of direction and mission:
“Microsoft as an entity no longer has any real direction, and no conviction, and crucially, no willingness to actually compete. Microsoft represents the apex of late-stage capitalism, where failure is rewarded, and the ability to shift capital rapidly voids the necessity to deliver for consumers and society in general.
Microsoft increasingly just seems to go where other companies, true innovators, say the money is — looking for the next fad to devour and process, rather than curate and cultivate. How will Xbox, Surface, or Windows 11 grow without risk, investment, and curating consumer confidence? In a world where Microsoft has enough capital to just move wherever the wind is blowing, it simply doesn’t seem to care. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
As PCMag reports, it sounds as though Musk is betting AI can replicate and pump out high-quality software, rivaling the Office programs from Microsoft, a company that’s betting heavily on generative AI. Last year, Musk also mentioned his plans to use artificial intelligence to create video games.
To develop Macrohard, Musk seems to be leveraging the growing Colossus supercomputer at xAI’s Memphis facility. According to Musk, xAI will buy millions of Nvidia enterprise-grade GPUs as rival companies, including OpenAI and Meta, do the same in their pursuit of cutting-edge AI.
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