"Juying" (a joking nickname for Microsoft in Chinese) is really coming. Elon Musk is taking on Microsoft head - on and officially announced a new company, aiming to "replicate" the entire Microsoft with AI.
While everyone was still digesting the latest developments in the AI field from OpenAI, Google, and Meta recently, Elon Musk once again stole the spotlight. Recently, he officially announced that his xAI would incubate a brand - new AI software company named Macrohard.
Just hearing the name, you might think it's just another "tech joke" in the Musk style, a jest at Microsoft. However, upon closer inspection, you'll find that this time, he's not joking around. Instead, he seriously intends to use a software company purely driven by AI Agents to challenge the world's most powerful software empire.
Musk emphasized on X: "Although the name is a bit funny, the project is definitely real."
From a Joke to an Official Project
Actually, the name Macrohard didn't emerge today. As early as 2021, Musk posted a joke on X: "Macrohard >> Microsoft." At that time, no one took it seriously and just thought Musk was "picking a fight" with Bill Gates.
Fast - forward to July 2024, Microsoft experienced a global outage, causing service disruptions for millions of users. Musk took the opportunity to dig out this old post and make fun of it.
But no one expected that a year later, Musk would turn this joke into a reality.
On August 22 this year, he announced on X: "Join @xAI to build a pure AI software company called Macrohard. Although the name is a bit funny, the project is definitely real!"
More importantly, previous reports said that as early as August 1, the trademark application for Macrohard had been submitted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) - which indicates that Musk has moved it to the practical level, not just a casual joke.
Multi - Agent Collaboration: Musk Plans to "Replicate" Microsoft with AI
As he mentioned in his tweet, the core logic behind Musk's plan to build Macrohard is:
Software companies like Microsoft don't produce hardware themselves but make money through software products and subscription services. So, in theory, it's entirely possible to use AI to "simulate" a Microsoft.
In other words, Macrohard is positioned as: whatever Microsoft can do, AI can do it too, and only with AI.
In fact, Musk laid the groundwork for this plan as early as July. At that time, he revealed that xAI is building a multi - agent AI software company, where:
● The core engine: Scheduled by xAI's chatbot Grok;
● Hundreds of dedicated Agents: Responsible for programming, image/video generation and understanding respectively, working collaboratively;
● Virtual user interaction: Agents can simulate human software usage in virtual machines and conduct repeated tests until the results are excellent.
At that time, Musk even "teased" in his tweet: "This is a grand challenge (macro challenge) and a difficult problem (hard problem). The competition will be extremely fierce! Can you guess the name of this company?"
Now the answer is revealed: it's Macrohard.
In addition, foreign media reported that in the Macrohard trademark application submitted by xAI to the USPTO, the scope is quite broad, including: voice and text generation software, AI tools for design/coding, conversational AI chatbots, AI - driven video game development, etc.
This inevitably makes people think of Microsoft's product matrix: Office, Teams, Copilot, Visual Studio, Xbox... For almost every product line, Macrohard seems to be looking for an AI - based alternative. This also means that in Musk's vision, Macrohard is not simply an "upgraded version of an AI chatbot" but a distributed, multi - Agent collaborative AI factory, targeting Microsoft.
Currently, Musk has hardly released any other specific information about Macrohard.
But to make hundreds of Agents operate simultaneously, a single chatbot is far from enough. So, some media speculate that the computing power pillar behind Macrohard should be the supercomputer cluster Colossus 2 that xAI is building in Memphis, USA.
After all, when competing with OpenAI and others, Colossus was a key part of Musk's AI strategy.
Previously, Musk confirmed that the Colossus 2 project plans to deploy one million NVIDIA GPUs. With this configuration, its peak computing power is expected to reach 2000 - 4000 EFLOPS, a five - fold increase compared to the current Colossus with 200,000 GPUs (800 EFLOPS).
Conclusion: Joke or the Future?
Undoubtedly, Microsoft is one of the important players in the current AI field. In the past few years, it has invested over tens of billions of dollars in OpenAI and deeply integrated the GPT model into the Office suite and Windows system, trying to make Copilot a standard in daily software use.
Musk, on the other hand, has long been a critic of OpenAI. He has repeatedly accused its cooperation with Microsoft of deviating from the original vision of "open - source and public welfare." Meanwhile, the rift between him and Bill Gates is no longer a secret, and he has publicly "clashed" with Gates several times.
In this context, the birth of Macrohard seems more like Musk turning this war of words into a real - world business confrontation.
In the future, can Macrohard really "replicate Microsoft with AI"? No one can give an answer yet. But one thing is certain: Musk is posing the most radical question to the entire software industry in his own way - If a software company like Microsoft can be completely simulated by AI, what will the future of the software industry look like?
Reference links:
https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musk-targets-bill-gates-microsoft-new-ai-venture-macrohard/
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/elon-musk-takes-on-bill-gates-microsoft-with-macrohard-what-it-is-9145022
This article is from the WeChat public account "CSDN", compiled by Zheng Liyuan, and published by 36Kr with authorization.