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Elon Musk has unveiled his latest company: Macrohard. And yes, that is indeed a terrible pun based on Microsoft.
Musk said his big idea behind was to simulate a software company, using AI not just for the code but the entire organisation. Of course, it’s not entirely clear why you’d mimic Microsoft’s management structure if you had an AI powerful enough to generate operating systems for you.
A filing setting up the company suggested it would make software tools to produce human speech and text, as well as “downloadable computer software for designing, coding, running, and playing video games using artificial intelligence”.
The idea, it seems, is to use AI to make software, and then use AI to test the software, and then use AI to tweak the software based on that virtual use, and so on, until bug-free, usable software exists.
Musk tweeted: “It’s a tongue-in-cheek name, but the project is very real!”
That is at least true: Musk’s AI company trademarked the name earlier this month, and “Macrohard Ventures” was incorporated last week – though it’s clearly been a joke fermenting in Musk’s head for some time. Back in 2021, he tweeted: “Macrohard >> Microsoft”.
Whatever you think about Musk, he would have done much worse in branding – there’s no-one else in tech who can come up with a cringe name for everything from a tunnelling startup (The Boring Company) to a government department designed to cut aid to the poorest people in the world (DOGE).
The seemingly random model names for Tesla cars are designed to spell out a word only a teenager would snicker at: Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y. (Model E remains a Ford copyright, apparently, hence the inclusion of the number.)
He’s also obsessed with the letter X. He’s owned the X.com domain since before PayPal made him even more wealthy, then famously rebranded Twitter to X. He also used the letter in SpaceX, xAI and even offspring – Musk, along with the singer Grimes, named a child “X Æ A-12”; Grimes is now his ex, showing she too likes that letter.
Macrohard, while it may lack the 24th letter of the alphabet, fits in the Musk playbook. it’s a silly joke of a name that’s designed to amuse Musk and nab a few headlines. For example: “Elon Musk to Take on Microsoft with Macrohard”.
With any Musk project, the key thing to remember is this: don’t hold your breath.
But we do know some details. Musk’s aim is to build a purely AI software company using his existing xAI. Back in July, Musk said xAI was working on a “multi-agent AI software company” with hundreds of specialised agents working together that “emulates humans interacting with the software in virtual machines until the result is excellent”.
Name aside, this isn’t about replacing Microsoft products, but disrupting the entire industry. In one example suggested by an analyst, instead of using AI to make a rival to Excel, Macrohard could – and that word is doing a lot of heavy lifting here – deploy AI agents that make financial software to meet specific needs and real-time user feedback, and keep it updated without humans.
“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,” Musk noted on X.com last week.
And yes, that would be possible – if AI could generate usable code. Or code on par with Microsoft’s, anyway. This is something Microsoft is actively working towards itself via its acquisition of GitHub and subsequent AI-powered coding tools. If it was possible to do, Microsoft would itself be a purely AI software company, one presumes.
It raises an interesting future where automated coding means we can write our own software rather than rely on behemoths like Microsoft. Well, a future where those with massive data centres and AI companies can do it for us, anyway.
Coding is one area where AI has shown some plenty of promise, though there’s of course more to software engineering than churning out lines of code.
But true disruption the way Musk is imagining likely remains a long way off – and if and when it does happen, do you want to buy Musk’s software just because it has a mildly amusing name? Microsoft may well be eyeing the future of software with some concern, but it won’t be too worried about Macrohard just yet.
