The Boring Company has raised $3 billion in a Series D funding round that values the tunnel-construction startup at $23 billion. The round was led by the United Arab Emirates, with Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Human Capital, Vy Capital and Valor Equity Partners also taking part.
The financing gives Elon Musk’s company fresh backing for its effort to build underground transport infrastructure. The Boring Company says its aim is to ease traffic by shifting vehicle journeys into a three-dimensional network of tunnels below ground.
The company plans to dig more than 150 kilometers of tunnels in the Middle Eastern country. The brief did not set out a timetable for that work or provide further details of the planned network.
The Wall Street Journal reported in July that The Boring Company had been seeking to raise as much as $4 billion. The completed $3 billion round establishes a $23 billion valuation for the company, placing a substantial value on a business whose projects combine construction work with its proposed model for underground vehicle travel.
The Boring Company already operates a handful of tunnels in Las Vegas, Nevada, linking hotel casinos and the convention center. It has also recently begun work in Nashville, Tennessee, where it plans a 10-mile underground loop.
The Las Vegas operations provide the company with an existing tunnel system while the Nashville and Middle East projects would extend its work into new markets. Details including the completion date for the Nashville loop, the timing of the Middle East project and financial information about the Las Vegas operations were not provided.
The investment brings together the United Arab Emirates and several prominent venture investors around The Boring Company’s infrastructure plans. It also gives the company capital as it seeks to expand from its current Las Vegas network to larger proposed systems elsewhere.
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