Elon Musk’s Much-Hyped Hyperloop One Is Shutting Down: Report
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Guess it didn’t live up to the hype. Hyperloop One, the chrome-plated pipe dream of a tube-transportation firm, is shutting down operations, according to Bloomberg News. The company is auctioning off its assets and laying off its workforce with an eye toward pushing its few remaining employees out the door on Dec. 31, insiders familiar with the matter told the outlet on Thursday. After that, all of its intellectual property will shift to majority stakeholder DP World, a Dubai port operator. It marks an ignoble ending for a once-buzzy startup based on tech dreamed up by Elon Musk. In 2013 he unveiled the open-source design for the hyperloop, a vacuum tube technology that promised to send passengers and cargo whizzing around the world. Hyperloop One, founded a year later, tinkered with Musk’s so-called “alpha paper” on the concept, raised $450 million, and built a small test track in the Nevada desert. But it never truly managed to get off the ground, with Bloomberg reporting that the company had failed to secure a contract to build a working model at scale.
