It began as a complaint. On 17 December 2016, stuck in Los Angeles traffic, Elon Musk sent a short run of tweets. Traffic, he wrote, was driving him nuts. He would build a tunnel-boring machine and just start digging. Then, in the last of the four: I am actually going to do this.
What almost nobody remembers is how little there was behind it. Within an hour, reporting at the time shows, the idea had a name. The company was a joke that people took seriously, and a month later, in January 2017, it was registered.
Environmental reviews dragged on, neighbours objected and lawsuits followed.
It was born inside SpaceX, a side project of the rocket company, and it started digging where it did for a plain reason: SpaceX already owned the land, so no one had to give permission. Musk paid for the early work himself, with the company's first funding of about $113 million coming mostly from him.
The wound was Los Angeles itself, which in 2018 and 2019 quietly refused to let the idea in. Environmental reviews dragged on, neighbours objected and lawsuits followed. The Los Angeles plan was dropped. A graveyard of other proposals followed: Chicago, Washington to Baltimore, San Jose, Fort Lauderdale, Miami.
The company survived by being silly and shrewd at once. In 2018 it sold about 20,000 blowtorches as flamethrowers and 50,000 hats, raising money from fans. Then it found a customer who wanted a shuttle rather than a subway: the Las Vegas Convention Center. A contract came in May 2019, and the tunnels opened in 2021. It also built its own machine, Prufrock, designed to line the tunnel as it digs rather than stopping every few feet.
Critics never stopped. Engineers and transit experts questioned the cost, speed and safety; single-lane tunnels, missing emergency exits and ventilation worried them. In 2022 Texas regulators cited the company for five environmental violations. Jarrett Walker, a transit consultant, called it wildly hyped.
Still the money kept coming. A $675 million round in April 2022 valued it at about $5.7 billion. Wikipedia's current entry, which carries reliability warnings, reports a $3 billion round in September 2026 at $23 billion, tunnelling under way in Nashville, and deals in Dubai and Orlando. Treat that figure as unconfirmed until it is reported elsewhere.
Here is what a founder can take from it. A joke tweet, a name and a bit of land you already own were enough to begin. What kept the company alive was a single customer who wanted the small version of the dream.