Elon Musk has officially announced a new project under the AI company Xai, known as “Marcohard.” The new company, a tongue knock at Microsoft, aims to simulate the latter using only artificial intelligence (AI).
The goal of the new company is to ultimately become a “pure AI software company” that will become Microsoft's potential competitor in the computer software industry.
“It's a tongue-like name, but the project is very realistic!” Musk explained in an xPost About the topic. “In principle, given that software companies like Microsoft don't manufacture physical hardware, they should be able to simulate them completely with AI,” he added.
Musk is confident that such ventures will prevent Microsoft (and similar companies) from actually making hardware. So, in theory, a purely AI-powered alternative could provide similar services using only AI agents.
Macrohard: Microsoft does everything, but with AI
Reports say Macrohard can use Grok (Xai's chatbot) to generate specialized AI agents tailored to tasks such as coding, image/video generation, text, audio, and testing.
“We're creating a multi-agent AI software company @xai. @Grok is all working together to emulate people who interact with the software in their virtual machines until the results are excellent,” Musk tweeted in July.
“This is a macro challenge and a difficult issue of tough competition! Can you guess the name of this company?” he added at the time.
Musk appears to be very serious about the announcement. News reveals that the company's name was already registered as a trademark on August 1st. Trademark filing highlights some interesting details, including audio/text generation software, AI tools for design/coding, and even a wide range of money transfers, including creating AI-driven video games.
Beyond that, there's little specific information released, but Macrohard could potentially be powered by Xai's Colossus supercomputer in Memphis.
So far, Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in Openai and has integrated AI into Windows and Office. To this end, Musk, who is critical of Openai and Bill Gates, has placed Macrohard as a direct competitor.
Joke name, but serious intent
Musk has been joking about “Macrohard >> Microsoft” since at least 2021. Macrohard also fits wider plays on masks.
He increasingly frames Tesla as “AI Robotics Company,” pushing humanoid robots and Robotaxis, and now wants to directly attack the software giant. Whatever the future of Macrohard is, it's clear that Musk wants to see if AI can replace the entire software company.
For this purpose, we not only automate part of the coding, but also actually replicate the entire pipeline (engineering, management, QA, and even user testing). In other words, Macrohard would act as an experimental “all prize company.”
This is a high-risk, high-fishing move, but if it works, it challenges Microsoft (and others like Google) to the core.
