Elon Musk’s tunneling venture has priced itself at $23 billion after a $3 billion financing led by the United Arab Emirates, a bet that the company can replicate its Las Vegas loop across the Middle East and the United States despite a trail of abandoned projects and regulatory violations.
The money and the mandate
The round draws from the same investor circle that has backed Musk’s other ventures, Valor Equity Partners, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Singapore’s Temasek and Baron Capital. The UAE commitment comes with a specific build-out: more than 150 kilometers of tunnels, including the Dubai Loop announced in February 2025. The company’s statement frames the capital as fuel for a transition from a single operating system to a multi-city program, citing faster machine design, a first hard-rock project in Nashville, and the first international construction contract.
The operating reality
For now, the only revenue-generating loop remains the Las Vegas Convention Center connection, where Tesla vehicles shuttle passengers between the convention center and casino resorts. A 20-mile Nashville project broke ground this year despite a Vanderbilt University survey in March showing most residents opposed the tunnels. The company has also logged hundreds of environmental violations in Las Vegas, per ProPublica, along with workplace safety and environmental citations in Texas.
The Tesla loop
The two companies are financially intertwined. Tesla paid Boring Co. roughly $1 million last year to excavate a tunnel beneath its Austin Gigafactory linking a Cybertruck line to a loading lot, and every Boring Co. loop to date runs on Tesla vehicles. The Vegas Loop is expanding toward the airport and Allegiant Stadium, with a University of Nevada Las Vegas station approved in June.
The pattern
Musk’s tunneling ambitions have a high attrition rate. Projects in Los Angeles were abandoned in 2018; proposals in Chicago and the Washington, D.C. area never advanced. The Baltimore Ravens won a company-sponsored contest for a free one-mile tunnel this year and declined the offer after initial meetings. The latest valuation assumes the next phase, international, hard-rock, and heavily financed, behaves differently than the last one.