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Elon Musk takes on Microsoft with AI operating system ‘Macrohard’

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London, UK
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Elon Musk is going after big tech pillars like Microsoft with ‘Macrohard’, an operating system that will use AI agents to run all operations with minimal human involvement.

Despite the tongue-in-cheek name, ‘Macrohard’ is very much real.

Between going up against Keir Starmer’s immigration policies on X, running both Tesla and Space X, and legally challenging OpenAI for making ChatGPT ubiquitous with iPhones, it seems Elon Musk still has enough free time to create an entirely new software company from the ground up.

People initially chuckled at the announcement for Macrohard, thinking Musk was having a light-hearted jab at Microsoft’s big tech gluttony, but it turns out the tech tycoon is laying the groundwork for a company he believes will be a genuine competitor in the near future.

Under the umbrella of xAI, which already encompasses Grok, the Colossus Supercomputer in Memphis, and the Atlanta Data Center, Musk has successfully secured a trademark for Macrohard – which is arguably the company’s most ambitious undertaking to date.

Embracing AI with all the zeal of an evil overlord, Musk has hinted that human agents are not required to run operating systems anymore, and plans to make Macrohard almost entirely autonomous.

The premise is that intelligent systems will be leveraged to perform all the operations Microsoft does: whether that writing code, managing systems, or running software projects. Musk argues that Microsoft’s lack of hardware indicates that everything could simply be run by AI.

In theory, that would mean a rival to office suites like Microsoft 365 coded, updated, and maintained, developer tools like GitHub Copilot built entirely by machine intelligence, and customer service platforms that never sleep – or nip off several times a day to the bog.

Instead of relying on offices full of engineers, managers, and support staff, Macrohard would be structured as a hive of autonomous agents, each handling its own domain and coordinating with others in real time.

The implications, while still speculative, are crazy. Imagine a world where a company can ‘order’ bespoke payroll software or a CRM system, and Macrohard’s agents deliver it in a matter of hours. No outsourcing, no delays, no stress, no heated squabbles involving HR — just AI designing, coding, testing, deploying, and maintaining at full whack.

If it proves as effective as Grok is making it sound to X users, it’s no overreach to say that Macrohard would disrupt (but genuinely, in this case) the very idea of how a software company is built or run. However, whether big time clients or governments would trust computers to run their critical operations basically unaided is dubious, so it would have to perform faultlessly right out of the gate.

Of course there are other major hurdles to overcome, too. xAI has an incredible amount of infrastructure behind it, but the processing power needed to run all aspects of a digital company without manpower would potentially rack up energy usage akin to that of entire continents.

For a self-proclaimed advocator of renewable energy, an undertaking of this magnitude would be nothing short of ecologically egregious. You can imagine Microsoft executives also probably won’t sit idly by while a company inversely mocking its name spreads its wings in the same space.

The whole thing could simply be a pipe dream Musk is using to irk Microsoft, but the thing is with him, you just never know. History has shown that, overnight, a handful of seemingly infantile tweets can manifest into something very big and very expensive.

Perhaps it’s the natural progression for Musk. Because, if he spreads himself any thinner, he’ll need computers to run corners of his empire anyway.

Editor in Chief London, UK

I’m Jamie (He/Him), the Editor in Chief at Thred. Keeping up with gaming, tech, and culture is my thing, but when away from my keyboard, you’ll probably find me wrapped around a large Tango ice blast at the latest mediocre horror flick. Follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn and drop me some ideas/feedback via email.

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