xAI Core Project Macrohard Stalled, Leadership Exodus Continues, Tesla Takes Over Related Work

Gate News reports that on March 12, the core AI Agent project Macrohard at xAI has stalled. The project was announced by Musk in August last year, with a name parodying Microsoft, aiming to simulate white-collar work in an entire software company using AI. Since its launch, the project has frequently changed leadership and faced expansion difficulties. After two Macrohard leaders resigned in February, Musk announced at a company-wide meeting that xAI co-founder Toby Pohlen would take over, but Pohlen announced his departure from xAI just 16 days later. Among nearly 20 xAI engineers listed on LinkedIn with Macrohard-related positions, most have left or transferred roles in recent months, with over ten leaving in the past month alone. Currently, there are no Macrohard-related positions on xAI’s recruitment page. Meanwhile, a Macrohard data collection project involving over 600 AI annotators was paused last month. These contractors were previously asked to record their work and leisure activities via screen recordings to train AI to mimic human operations. The project leader informed workers in early February that the model had many flaws and required adjustments to the model and data collection methods, promising a restart in two to four weeks, but it has not resumed as of this week. Tesla is taking over this direction. Insiders say some Macrohard work and computing power have been transferred to Tesla’s Autopilot team. Tesla is developing an AI Agent called Digital Optimus and has hired engineers to enable autonomous software interaction, code generation, and real-time decision-making. Unlike Macrohard, which mainly relies on analyzing static screenshots, Digital Optimus uses real-time video stream processing similar to Full Self-Driving (FSD). After the report was published, Musk posted that Macrohard/Digital Optimus is a joint project between xAI and Tesla, and part of Tesla’s $2 billion investment agreement with xAI announced in January.