Elon Musk announced a new AI venture on Friday called “Macrohard,” which he claims will be a “purely AI software company.” The name is a clear jab at tech giant Microsoft, and the project is meant to take on the company by simulating an entire software firm with artificial intelligence.
In a post on X, Musk said, “It’s a tongue-in-cheek name, but the project is very real!” He explained his vision, stating that since software companies like Microsoft do not produce any physical hardware, it should be possible for AI to “simulate them entirely.”
This new company is part of Musk’s larger xAI initiative. Filings with the United States Patent and Trademark Office show that xAI applied for a trademark for “Macrohard” on August 1, outlining a wide range of AI-driven products and services. These include software for artificial speech-to-text conversion and chatbot software for simulating conversations.
Musk has been hinting at this project for some time. In a post in July 2024, he teased the idea of a “multi-agent AI software company” where xAI’s Grok would create “hundreds of specialized coding and image/video generation/understanding agents” to work together. He said these agents would emulate humans interacting with the software in virtual machines until the results were excellent.
The name “Macrohard” is not new to Musk’s public comments. He first used the term four years ago in a post saying “Macrohard >> Microsoft,” and he reshared the post in July 2024 after Microsoft experienced a global outage.
According to tech publication Teslarati, the Macrohard venture is closely tied to xAI’s ambitious Colossus 2 supercomputer project in Memphis. This project, which aims to be the world’s largest AI supercomputer, is intended to provide the massive computing power needed to train and run the AI models that will power Macrohard’s operations.