Boring Company Raises $3 Billion Led By The UAE, Which Is Also Its Biggest Customer

The Boring Company has raised $3 billion in a Series D round led by the United Arab Emirates and its affiliated investment entities, valuing Elon Musk's tunnelling venture at $23 billion.

The company said the expanded UAE partnership could eventually involve more than 150 kilometres, or 93 miles, of underground infrastructure, building on the Dubai Loop project already awarded.

Alongside the UAE, the round drew Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Temasek, Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Human Capital, Baron Capital and Dubai-based Shamal Holding — several of them longstanding backers of Musk's other ventures.

Proceeds are earmarked for hiring across engineering, operations and production, for the Vegas Loop, the Music City Loop in Nashville and Dubai Loop, and for further development of the company's Prufrock boring platform.

The unusual structure

The country leading the round is also the customer for the largest piece of work it is funding.

That is not improper, and sovereign investors frequently back companies operating in their own markets. But it is the defining feature of this deal and it is worth stating plainly: the UAE is simultaneously the lead financier of a company and the commissioner of its biggest announced project.

The Dubai Loop, announced in February last year, covers 6.4 kilometres of tunnel and four stations. Construction is slated to begin late this year. Precast production is under way, according to the company.

No passenger tunnel is open in the UAE.

What does operate

The company's only live passenger system is in Las Vegas, where the Vegas Loop runs Teslas through tunnels connecting the convention centre and nearby hotels.

It has carried more than four million passengers. Clark County has entitled a 123-station network after approving 19 further stations, and the company recently began boring its 14th tunnel in the city, its 25th overall.

In Nashville, state regulators granted the Music City Loop its permit in February and crews broke ground immediately. By August, two Prufrock machines were running concurrently beneath the city.

The valuation, and the gap it has to close

The $23 billion figure is roughly four times the $5.7 billion the company was worth in 2022, after a $675 million round.

The Wall Street Journal reported in July that the company was seeking as much as $4 billion.

Musk marked the raise with a characteristic line: "Defeating traffic is the ultimate boss battle. Even the most powerful humans in the world cannot defeat traffic."

The record behind it

Not all of the company's announced projects have been built.

It abandoned tunnel projects in Los Angeles in 2018, and proposals in Chicago and Washington did not proceed. A Washington-to-New York hyperloop announced in 2017 never materialised; what was delivered instead, in Las Vegas, is cars driven through tunnels.

Industry coverage has also noted that the company has not demonstrated, even in simulation, that the Vegas Loop reduces traffic or outperforms conventional mass transit — which is the claim the whole proposition rests on.

What to watch

Whether Dubai Loop construction starts on schedule. Late 2026 is weeks away. Precast production having begun is a real indicator; a groundbreaking date is a better one.

How the 150 kilometres is defined. The company describes it as what the partnership "could eventually involve". That is an aspiration, not a contracted scope. Whether it converts into awarded work, and over what period, is the measure that matters.

Whether the Vegas evidence arrives. Four million passengers is a real number. A demonstration that the system moves people more efficiently than the alternatives is the thing that would justify the model at scale — and after five years of operation, it has not been published.