Musk launches Macrohard in cheeky nod to Microsoft - Elon Musk — Elon Musk. Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters

Elon Musk on Wednesday unveiled a joint project between Tesla and his artificial intelligence startup xAI, which he called “Macrohard” or “Digital Optimus”, and said that it was a system capable of emulating the functions of software companies.

In a post on his social media platform X, Musk said the project pairs xAI’s Grok large language model, acting as a high-level “navigator”, with a Tesla-developed AI agent that processes real-time computer screen video and keyboard and mouse actions.

The launch of Anthropic’s Claude Cowork, which can perform a range of computer-based tasks autonomously, has already spooked software investors who fear that agentic AI can disrupt established business models.

Musk’s xAI was previously building Macrohard as an AI project that would allow developers to simulate software creations by companies like Microsoft.

“In principle, it is capable of emulating the function of entire companies. That is why the program is called Macrohard, a funny reference to Microsoft,” Musk said on Wednesday.

Musk said the system would run on Tesla’s in-house AI4 chip paired with xAI’s Nvidia-based server hardware, describing the combination as cost-competitive. The announcement comes after Tesla entered into an agreement in January to invest about US$2-billion to acquire shares in xAI.

IPO

SpaceX acquired xAI last month in an all-stock deal that valued the rocket maker at $1-trillion and xAI at $250-billion, coming ahead of a potential blockbuster initial public offering for SpaceX later this year, with Musk citing orbital data centres as a main reason for the merger.