Elon Musk might already run 7 companies, but he seems to want to start another one. And its name could be a dig at a fellow billionaire.
Elon Musk has teased the name ‘Macrohard’ for a new company. Macrohard seems to be a play on ‘Microsoft’ — both parts of the name are the opposite of the the words in Microsoft. ‘Marco’, meaning large, is the opposite of ‘micro’, which means small, and hard is the opposite of soft. It appears that Musk will name the company Macrohard as a way to needle Bill Gates.
“We are creating a multi-agent AI software company at xAI, where Grok spawns hundreds of specialized coding and image/video generation/understanding agents all working together and then emulates humans interacting with the software in virtual machines until the result is excellent,” Musk posted on X. “This is a macro challenge and a hard problem with stiff competition! Can you guess the name of this company?” he added.
Musk’s phrasing — which called it a ‘macro’ challenge and a ‘hard’ problem — made users think that the company would be called Macrohard. “Macrohard,” a user said in the replied, to which Musk simply replied with a winking emoji.
Musk has had a fractious relationship with Bill Gates. Musk had first clashed with Gates when he’d learnt that he had had shorted Tesla stock. Musk had been irate that Gates publicly claimed to care about the environment while simultaneously betting on the failure of Tesla. “The lack of self-awareness and hypocrisy of Gates who had the nerve to ask me to donate to his mostly window-dressing environmental causes, while simultaneously aiming to make $500M from Tesla’s demise, boggles the mind,” Musk had posted on X in 2023.
More recently, Musk has attacked Gates after he’d claimed that DOGE would cost 2 million lives, calling him a “huge liar”. He’s also accused Gates of paying publications of writing negative pieces about him, and made fun of his physique. Most recently, Musk had highlighted Bill Gates’ relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and hinted that he’d be in his client list.
It’s clear that there’s no love lost between Elon Musk and Bill Gates, and by hinting at naming his company ‘Macrohard’, Musk seems to be trolling him yet again. Macrohard will likely use the same techniques as used in Grok Heavy, but scaled to much higher numbers and modalities. Based on Musk’s description, Macrohard could spawn hundreds of AI agents with video and image capabilities, which could produce complex software like computer games. It remains to be seen if Musk actually announces Macrohard, but he has already given enough hints that he fully intends to do so.