From a Twitter Joke to a $100 Billion Business

🛠️ In 2016, Elon Musk spent $300 million to build an underground tunnel.
Wall Street laughed: “Another Musk PR stunt.”
But today, that “stunt” is worth over $100 billion.

This is the incredible story of The Boring Company — a project born from a joke that may ultimately redefine urban transportation.

It all started with frustration.
In December 2016, while stuck in Los Angeles traffic, Musk tweeted:
“I’m fed up with traffic. I’m going to buy a tunnel boring machine and start digging.”
Most people thought he was joking.
Two weeks later, The Boring Company was founded. Its mission: to dig tunnels until traffic jams are gone.

At first, no one took the idea seriously. Analysts dismissed it as a “distraction PR move.”
But Musk saw what others didn’t:

• tunnel boring technology hadn’t changed in decades,
• construction costs were sky-high (up to $1 billion per mile),
• the equipment was inefficient and slow.

He decided to reinvent the industry.
First, he bought a used boring machine and started experimenting.
Then, he funded the project in a rather unusual way. In 2017, The Boring Company raised $112.5 million — $100 million of which came from Musk himself.
The rest was raised by selling 20,000 flamethrowers at $500 each.
Wall Street rolled its eyes again — but Musk earned twice the attention and the money.

In 2018, the first test tunnel was completed in Hawthorne, California, costing just $10 million per mile — 100 times cheaper than traditional construction.
The secret? A smaller tunnel diameter and a new continuous digging method.
That’s when the jokes stopped.

In 2019, Las Vegas offered Musk a $48.7 million contract to build a transport system under its Convention Center.
The project was completed in 2021 — fast, cheap, and without glitches.
That’s when the world realized: The Boring Company was not a PR stunt, but a proven concept.

Investors woke up.
In 2021, the company raised $675 million at a $5.7 billion valuation.
By 2023, Musk had expanded operations — now covering not only transport tunnels but also infrastructure: water, power, and fiber optics.
The company’s valuation surged to $127 billion.

Today, The Boring Company operates in Nevada, Texas, and Florida.
Cities around the world are lining up to join future projects.
The potential market is estimated in the trillions of dollars.

From one angry tweet — to one of Elon Musk’s most valuable and ambitious companies.