Elon Musk has announced that he is hiring software engineers to build a new company called Macrohard.
Does the name sound familiar?
If so, that’s because his mission is to recreate everything Microsoft can do and more using only artificial intelligence.
He shared a link on X to the job advert with xAI Careers and wrote: ‘MACROHARD, the much stronger AI equivalent of that other software company!’
After registering the name as a trademark in August, he’s now seriously trying to get it off the ground – despite many initially thinking it must be a joke to poke fun at Microsoft and its famous founder Bill Gates, who he has sparred with in the past.
The filing in August was wide-ranging, covering downloadable computer programmes and software including text generation, coding tools and digital assistants.
The name was clearly chosen to wind up Microsoft by being its exact opposite, which is typical of Musk’s sense of humour.
He likes a pun, and turned up to the Twitter HQ, as it was named then, carrying a ceramic basin, tweeting ‘Let that sink in’ while in the process of buying the company.
Insisting that the Macrohard project is really his latest undertaking, he said: ‘It’s a tongue-in-cheek name, but the project is very real!
‘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 play on words doesn’t end with Microsoft, as it is also similar to a profanity in Hindi which translates along the lines of m****rf****r, something which was noted by many reading the news.
Whether or not that aspect was intentional, Macrohard would not be the first time Musk has taken aim at Bill Gates, who is no longer formally involved with Microsoft but still has an advisory role and is its most famous face.
Just before overtaking philanthropist Gates as the second richest man in the world in 2020, he mocked him as ‘underwhelming’ after Gates admitted buying an electric car from Porsche rather than Musk’s company Tesla.
They’ve also argued over climate change and money with Musk angry that Gates had shorted Tesla stock, meaning he bet the company would lose value.
Posting in 2024, Musk said: ‘Once Tesla fully solves [self-driving] autonomy and has Optimus in volume production, anyone still holding a short position will be obliterated. Even Gates’.
Asked about the insults in an interview with the BBC in 2022, Gates said: ‘There’s no need for him to be nice to me.’
As well as Microsoft, Musk is gunning to replace Wikipedia too, a non-profit online encyclopedia, which he claims is biased against Conservatives.
A beta version of ‘Grokipedia’ will be published in two weeks, he claimed on his platform X, built with the help of his artificial intelligence Grok.
Perhaps we can await Grokstagram, Grokbook and GrokTok in the coming months too?
But if you want an AI social media platform, Meta and OpenAI have already created their own. Users can share videos of whatever they can dream up within the guardrails.
People have already using it to make videos of Pikachu on a barbecue.
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