The Boring Company, Musk's tunnel-digging startup, announced it raised $3 billion in a Series D funding round that values the company at $23 billion. The latest round is led by the UAE and its various investment entities, with funds earmarked to expand an existing partnership to "deploy mass quantities of underground infrastructure across the United Arab Emirates (UAE), including 150+ kilometers of tunnel," the company said. This is separate from the Dubai Loop project that will start later this year.
In addition to the UAE, the rest of the key investors in the round are a who's who of VC and PE players, including Human Capital, Vy Capital, Valor Equity Partners, Sequoia Capital, A16Z, Temasek, Shamal Holding, and Baron Capital.
Boring notes that its new "Prufrock" tunnel-boring platform is the future of boring large volumes of earth to create tunnels for traffic and infrastructure. The company said in August this year that it successfully implemented a fully autonomous partial tunnel build, which is likely where the industry is headed with zero-people-in-pit (ZPIT).
To date, the only operating tunnel system created by Boring is the "Vegas Loop" in Las Vegas, which added new stations at Westgate, Encore, Fontainebleau, and Sahara Las Vegas, with an airport connector opening soon. Boring says 4 million passengers have used the service.
Boring says the next project, in addition to work in the UAE, will be the "Music City Loop" in Nashville that was announced last year. The Music City Loop will connect Nashville with Music City Center, Lower Broadway, and Nashville International Airport. Work began in February of this year.