Always keen to be seen as a tech disruptor, Elon Musk’s recent post on X isn’t shy of setting out his intentions to compete with Microsoft. In the wake of January’s investment agreement by Tesla with xAI, Macrohard – see what he did there? – otherwise known as Digital Optimus, is a joint project between the two companies.
The newly formed Digital Optimus AI will provide primary ‘instinctive’ systems, with Grok contributing a secondary ‘thinking’ system 2. Musk said, “Grok is the master conductor/navigator with deep understanding of the world to direct digital Optimus, which is processing and actioning… real-time… video and keyboard/mouse actions.”
Further, he was characteristically bullish in declaring that it, “Will be the only real-time smart AI system. This is a big deal. 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. No other company can yet do this.”
Macrohard or Digital Optimus is a joint xAI-Tesla project, coming as part of Tesla’s investment agreement with xAI.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 11, 2026
Grok is the master conductor/navigator with deep understanding of the world to direct digital Optimus, which is processing and actioning the past 5 secs of…
Steve is an award-winning editor and copywriter with more than 20 years’ experience specialising in consumer technology and video games. With a career spanning from the first PlayStation to the latest in VR, he's proud to be a lifelong gamer.
