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- Futuristic transport startup Hyperloop One is shutting down, Bloomberg reported.
- The company was the most high-profile developer of hyperloops championed by Elon Musk.
- Musk previously said a hyperloop could cut travel times from LA to San Francisco to 30 minutes.
Hyperloop One, the startup that sought to build the futuristic hyperloop transit system championed by Elon Musk, is shutting down, Bloomberg reported.
The transport company is laying off most of its employees and selling its remaining assets, including a 1,500-foot-long test "loop" in the Nevada desert, anonymous sources cited by Bloomberg said.
Hyperloop One had raised more than $450 million, PitchBook previously reported. The money would have gone towards its goal of building a network of vacuum tubes that used air pressure to propel pods carrying passengers and cargo to their destination at speeds of up to 760 miles an hour.
Hyperloop One executives told The Verge in 2017 that they expected "working hyperloops around the world" by 2020.
However, the startup has run into financial difficulties and pivoted away from passenger travel over the past few years. It will reportedly close its Los Angeles offices and shut down for good by the end of the year.
It's a blow for advocates of Hyperloop technology, of which Elon Musk is by far the most famous.
Kate Allen
The Tesla CEO presented the idea of a Hyperloop in an "alpha paper." He previously described it as a cross between "a Concorde and a railgun and an air hockey table," and suggested it could allow commuters to travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 30 minutes.
Musk set up the Boring Company to explore alternatives to public transport methods, although the tunneling firm has scaled back its ambitions in recent years.
Plans to build hyperloop prototypes beneath Chicago, New York, and Washington DC all fizzled out, and so far the sum of Musk's ambitious plans is a 1.6-mile loop beneath the Las Vegas convention center where curious casino-goers can be shuttled through an underground tunnel in Tesla cars (and still occasionally get caught in traffic).
The Boring Company plans to expand the Las Vegas loop to 69 stations. However, despite Musk tweeting last year that the firm was still planning to build a hyperloop, the initial prototype hyperloop that Musk built at SpaceX's Californian HQ has been turned into a parking lot.
Hyperloop One did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.