In a new contest, Elon Musk’s tunneling firm, The Boring Company, will build a 1-mile tunnel for free to the best idea submitted to the company.
“Announcing the Tunnel Vision Challenge!” the company wrote on X. “Pitch us your best 1-mile tunnel idea (Loop, freight, pedestrian, utility, etc.), we’ll pick a winner, and build it…for free!”
Announcing the Tunnel Vision Challenge! Pitch us your best 1-mile tunnel idea (Loop, freight, pedestrian, utility, etc.), we’ll pick a winner, and build it…for free!
Details:https://t.co/xRTmClRjVt
Criteria:
-Usefulness (good bang for the bore)
-Stakeholder Engagement (get…— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) January 19, 2026
In an announcement on their website, the company said (emphasis ours):
Do you have Tunnel Vision?
You might if you often look around and wonder, wouldn’t it be a lot easier if I could get from Point A to Point B without the hassle of crossing busy roads, intersections, or other obstacles. Tunnels may be your answer!
The Boring Company (TBC) invites you to submit your proposal for a tunnel project up to 1 mile in length with a 12-foot inner diameter. TBC will select a winner from the proposals submitted and construct the tunnel free of charge. The tunnel can be a Loop tunnel, a freight tunnel, a pedestrian tunnel, a utility tunnel, a water tunnel, or any other use case where a tunnel would be useful. Prufrock is designed to construct mega-infrastructure projects in a matter of weeks instead of years – so let’s build!
The deadline for submissions will be February 23, 2026, and a winner will be picked on March 23, 2026.
As Tesla Oracle notes further;
Musk founded The Boring Company in an effort to reduce tunneling costs. To achieve this, the diameter of the tunnel boring machines (TBMs) was reduced to 12 feet.
Following the same principle of constant improvement, The Boring Company continually upgrades its TBMs. The latest TBM is named Prufrock 5 (pictured above).
With the previous version (Prufrock 4), The Boring Company achieved a phenomenal tunneling cost efficiency of $27 million per mile. Musk’s company is aiming to achieve a cost of $10 million per mile of tunneling with Prufrock 5 and its future TBMs.
Compared to the US standard, boring a 1-mile tunnel costs a staggering $2.5 billion on average (see graph below). So, the Tunnel Vision Challenge is offering at least a $27 million value for free.
Prufrock-4 is our smartest, fastest and safest Tunnel Boring Machine. And the next iterations (5, 6, and 7) are already being built at The Boring Factory in Texas. Goal is Continuous Mining and Zero-People-in-Tunnel (ZPIT).
We are hiring exceptional ME, EE, and SWEs – join us! pic.twitter.com/oKntdUnOsf
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) September 14, 2025
* * *
The outlet also notes that the Boring Company’s Las Vegas Convention Center Loop (LVCC) is the best example of a finished tunnel, which carries Tesla vehicles around the strip as long as you have a Model S, 3, X, Y, or Cybertruck (so basically all of ’em). The company collaborated with the Las Vegas Airport and city officials to set up a service called Vegas Loop that helps visitors with airport dropoffs.
Vegas Loop dropoff at the Airport!
Still in the early phases of the program, providing a small number of rides each day.
The ride includes both a tunnel portion and a long surface portion, with the latter shifting to subsurface when the 2.25 mile Airport Connector twin tunnels… https://t.co/uoqer0Jye5 pic.twitter.com/dMUAQUboAh
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) December 30, 2025
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