According to reports from people familiar with the matter, Hyperloop One, the startup with dreams of connecting cities with tunnels which would allow passengers and freight to zip between them at the speed of an airline, is shutting down.
The formerly prominent startup had raised over $450 million since it was founded in 2014, according to PitchBook. Outside of Las Vegas it built a small test track to develop its technologies, and briefly even took on the name Virgin Hyperloop One, following an investment from Richard Branson’s Virgin. After the startup decided last year to focus on cargo more than people, Virgin removed its branding.
Now, according to one of the sources, who wished to remain anonymous due to the matter discussed being private, the company has laid off most of its workers and is looking to sell off its remaining assets, such as the test track, and its machinery.
The company had employed over 200 people as of early 2022, but now it just closed its offices in Los Angeles. Its remaining employees, who have been given the job of liquidating the remaining assets, have been told their employment ends December 31st.
A source familiar with the situation said the remaining intellectual property of the company will be transferred to DP World, a Dubai-based conglomerate which has backed Hyperloop One since 2016, and owns a majority stake in the company.
According to a document reviewed by Bloomberg, Hyperloop One, which was formally known as Hyperloop Technologies, merged with a shell company this April. The value of shares in most classes was written down to zero cents at the time, and the shareholders of the shell company became the sole owners of Hyperloop One.
The company, founded in 2014, had held the promise of commercializing a technology introduced to the public a year earlier in a white paper by Elon Musk which outlined the concept of a hyperloop technology which could become a new type of transportation which might put an end to traffic.
However the company never won a contract to build a working hyperloop, and the company began suffering a string of negative press stories, as co-founder Brogan BamBrogan arrived at work and discovered a noose on his desk, and another co-founder, Shervin Pishevar, was forced out following a Bloomberg report on sexual harassment allegations which were leveled against him. Then Ziyavudin Magomedov, who had been a director at the company, was arrested in Russia on charges of fraud and embezzlement, unrelated to Hyperloop One.
The concept of the hyperloop remains however, with several companies at various stages of development of the technology, including Hardt Hyperloop, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies Inc. and Swisspod Technologies.
Even Elon Musk has entered the field, creating competitions for students to design hyperloops, and building a test-track. His Boring Company has even pursued related technologies in the field of tunneling.
