The Boring Company

History

The Boring Company was founded in December 2016 in Hawthorne, California, by Elon Musk following a series of public statements about his frustration with Los Angeles traffic congestion. In December 2016, Musk tweeted that he was "going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging." The company's name is a deliberate double entendre — referencing both the act of boring tunnels and the mundane quality of traffic.

The first physical work began on a test tunnel dug beneath the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, in early 2017. The tunnel, roughly 1.14 miles long, served as a proof-of-concept for the company's approach: small-diameter single-bore tunnels using electric vehicles rather than conventional rail systems.

Funding and Valuation

Initial funding came entirely from Musk personally. In 2017, the company conducted its first external funding round, raising $112.5 million. By 2022 the company had raised a cumulative total of $675 million across multiple rounds. In its most recently disclosed private valuation — conducted in 2024 — The Boring Company was valued at approximately $5.7 billion post-money, placing it among the most valuable private infrastructure companies in the United States.

Vegas Loop

The Vegas Loop is The Boring Company's most advanced and only fully operational project. The network consists of a series of single-bore tunnels beneath Las Vegas, primarily serving the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) and surrounding resort properties. Tunnels are approximately 12 feet (3.7 m) in diameter and transport passengers in modified Tesla Model 3 and Model Y vehicles that travel at speeds up to 40 mph (64 km/h).

Operational Segments (as of March 2026)

• LVCC Loop — The original 1.7-mile network connecting the three main halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Opened April 2021. Carries up to 4,400 passengers per hour across its three stations.
• West Hall Extension — Additional tunnels serving the expanded West Hall section of the LVCC, opened alongside the hall's expansion.
• Resorts World Extension — A 1.2-mile segment connecting the LVCC to the Resorts World Las Vegas casino resort. Opened 2025. The first Vegas Loop segment to connect a resort property directly to the convention center network.
• Downtown Las Vegas Loop — Under construction as of March 2026. Intended to extend the network to downtown Las Vegas and the Strip, significantly expanding the catchment area and passenger volumes.

The company has stated long-term plans to operate purpose-built vehicles capable of speeds exceeding 150 mph (241 km/h) once full regulatory approval is obtained and dedicated guideway infrastructure is in place. The current 40 mph operating speed reflects both the Tesla vehicle platform's tunnel geometry constraints and regulatory requirements for passenger transit systems.

Other Proposed Projects

Beyond Las Vegas, The Boring Company has announced or explored tunnel projects in several U.S. cities. As of March 2026, none have progressed to construction outside Nevada.

• Los Angeles — The Dugout Loop (a proposed tunnel connecting Dodger Stadium to Union Station) and the original Hawthorne test tunnel remain the company's California projects. The Hawthorne tunnel is no longer operational as a demonstration facility.
• Chicago O'Hare Express — A proposed high-speed underground link between downtown Chicago and O'Hare International Airport. The project received initial city support in 2018 but has not advanced to final approval or groundbreaking.
• Austin, Texas — A proposed tunnel connecting downtown Austin to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. The project aligns with Musk's relocation of multiple companies — including SpaceX and Tesla — to the Austin area. Regulatory discussions are ongoing.
• San Bernardino County, California — A proposed high-speed link within the county. Details remain limited and the project has not entered active development.

Technology and Operations

The Boring Company's fundamental technological bet is that small-diameter, electric-vehicle-based tunnels are cheaper and faster to build than conventional subway or transit tunnels. Traditional urban rail tunnels are typically 20 to 30 feet in diameter to accommodate train cars, platforms, and safety clearances. The Boring Company's tunnels are approximately 12 feet in diameter, reducing the volume of material to be excavated and the structural complexity of the bore itself.

The trade-off is capacity. A subway line can move tens of thousands of passengers per hour. The current Tesla-based Vegas Loop moves substantially fewer, constrained by vehicle occupancy (typically three to four passengers per car) and the volume of cars that can safely circulate through the network. The company has acknowledged this constraint and frames the fully autonomous, high-speed vehicle future as the solution — a system where pods run continuously with minimal headway, matching subway throughput without train-sized infrastructure.

Prufrock Boring Machines

The company uses a custom-designed family of tunnel boring machines (TBMs) called Prufrock, named for T.S. Eliot's poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Successive iterations have demonstrated measurable improvements in tunneling speed:

• Prufrock-1 — Initial prototype. Established baseline tunneling rates and validated the small-diameter approach.
• Prufrock-2 — Deployed in Las Vegas. Delivered meaningful speed improvements over conventional TBMs in comparable soil conditions.
• Prufrock-3 — Deployed in Las Vegas in 2024–2025. Achieved a peak tunneling rate of approximately 1 mile per week in 2025, a rate the company describes as significantly faster than the industry standard for comparable tunnel diameters. Conventional TBMs typically advance at a fraction of that rate in urban environments.

The company has stated an aspirational target of matching or exceeding human walking speed for continuous tunnel boring — roughly 3 miles per hour — as a long-term engineering goal with Prufrock-4 and future machines.

Leadership

Elon Musk serves as founder and CEO of The Boring Company, a role he has retained since the company's founding. Unlike SpaceX or Tesla, The Boring Company has a relatively lean public profile — Musk is the only executive who regularly speaks publicly about the company's direction, and it does not hold regular earnings calls or publish detailed operational reports as a private company.

The company is headquartered in Bastrop, Texas, a location it shares with several other Musk-affiliated ventures that relocated from California to the Austin area beginning in 2021.

Related Coverage

• Elon Musk — Profile & Latest News
• SpaceX
• Tesla
• Austin, Texas