by Boring Company’s new funding, announced Wednesday, comes from venture capital firms as well as real estate companies. Sequoia, a leading Silicon Valley company that has invested in Musk before, co-led the investment with Vy Capital. The deal values the Boring Company at nearly $5.7 billion.
“We’re still very excited and we want to move forward,” Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis told CNN Business Thursday.
He said the government is collaborating with the Boring Company on engineering issues for the project, which would connect the city center and a nearby beach. They are working to align the route to a right of way over which the city has more control. He declined to say when it could be completed.
Musk, Tesla’s CEO, had previously presented a grander vision for the Boring Company, with people being whisked around cities in dedicated autonomous vehicles at speeds of up to 120 mph. But the reality so far, at least in Las Vegas, has involved human drivers operating what resemble standard Teslas at 35 mph.
Boring Company still says it plans to eventually transition to fully autonomous operations, which will reduce the cost of operations.
Sequoia said in a blog post that the Boring Company is at a “tipping point”.
“The next few years are about 10x the performance, making their systems quickly reusable and fully autonomous,” he wrote.
Boring Company says its state-of-the-art tunnel digging machine is designed to be able to operate remotely and autonomously, without needing anyone in the tunnel. His current iteration of the machine, called the Prufrock, is designed to dig up to a mile a week. Digging tunnels faster is key to reducing costs.
Boring Company said it also plans to build utility and cargo tunnels. Did not respond to a request for comment.
