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Hyperloop One, a futuristic transportation startup touted by Elon Musk, is shutting down its airless tubes.
The company is laying off employees, selling remaining assets (including a test track and machinery) and closing its offices, Bloomberg reports. After hiring more than 200 employees in 2022, the remaining employees – tasked with overseeing the asset sale – have been told their employment will end on December 31. All intellectual property of Hyperlooop One will be handed over to the majority shareholder DP World, based in Dubai.
The billionaire estimated in a 2013 proposal that a capsule could carry passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in just 35 minutes and “feel like you're on a plane.” After its founding in 2014, the buzzy startup raised around $450 million in venture capital funds and other investments and even built a test track near Las Vegas to develop its technology.
For a moment, things looked promising for the company, which promised to end traffic once and for all. Originally founded as Hyperloop Technologies, the company changed its name to Hyperloop One in 2016 and was then renamed Virgin Hyperloop One after Richard Branson invested in the company and joined its board. After an exodus of top executives, Virgin dropped its name from Hyperloop One after choosing to focus on freight rather than passengers.
A former SpaceX subsidiary, the Boring Company, which was spun off as a separate company in 2018, built a few short tunnels, including a mile-long prototype tube near SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. However, other proposed loops never materialized. A route from East Hollywood to Dodger Stadium, scheduled for completion in 2020, remains a pipe dream, and elsewhere planned projects in Chicago and Washington, D.C. have been quietly shelved.
Musk has long promoted the concept of a hyperloop, and news of its closure follows the recent revelation that two million Tesla vehicles have been recalled following a two-year investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The agency noted that the car models with self-driving function – including the Models Y, S, 3 and an increase in accidents and accidents.
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A report published by Portal on Wednesday detailed how the electric vehicle maker denied responsibility for failures of parts it knew were defective, often citing “misuse” or “abuse” of vehicles to make claims to refuse repairs to vehicles under warranty.
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Musk's hype-happy approach to startups isn't just limited to transportation companies, either. After acquiring Twitter for $44 billion last year and promising shiny new changes to the platform coupled with his vision to make it a place of free expression, Musk managed to turn the once semi-functional site into a hellscape transform. As to give in his misfortune to anyone but himself.
This article was updated at 9:23 p.m. ET to include additional information about Hyperloop One.