Austin Breaks Its Funding Record for the Third Time This Year

Austin's startup funding record apparently wasn't meant to last very long.

Elon Musk's The Boring Company raised $3 billion in a new Series D, valuing the Austin-area tunneling company at $23 billion. It's the largest startup funding round in Austin history. And remarkably, it's the third time that record has been broken this year.

This year's progression:

• Base Power: $1 billion
• Saronic: $1.75 billion
• The Boring Company: $3 billion

Saronic's March round had already set a new Austin record at $1.75 billion and valued the autonomous-ship company at $9.25 billion. Less than six months later, The Boring Company nearly doubled the size of that raise.

The Boring Company's new round was led by the United Arab Emirates and affiliated investment entities, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Human Capital, Vy Capital, Valor Equity Partners, Temasek, Shamal Holding, and Baron Capital. The company has come a long way since Musk launched it in 2017 after complaining about traffic.

Its goal is to build underground transportation networks using tunnels dug by its own boring machines. The company currently operates its best-known system in Las Vegas and is expanding into Nashville and Dubai.

The new capital will help fund a much bigger international expansion.

The Boring Company plans to develop more than 150 kilometers of underground infrastructure across the UAE, while also increasing hiring across engineering, production, and operations and expanding its Loop projects in Las Vegas, Nashville, and Dubai.

A $1 billion funding round would have looked extraordinary in Austin only a few years ago. This year, one local company hit that mark, another blew past it at $1.75 billion, and now a third has raised $3 billion.

Austin is increasingly producing companies capable of attracting some of the largest private funding rounds in the country.