How is Elon Musk’s underground tunneling company doing?

At the end of November 2025, Steve Davis, President of the Boring Company, suddenly accepted an invitation to participate in a discussion on X. In it, he discussed the new tunnel project that the company was trying to start in Nashville. The discussion was 90 minutes long, but not much specific content was given.

However, according to Fortunewithout mentioning the content of the conversation, Davis speaking up was a surprise. Before that, for many years, Boring Company always stayed away from the media, ignored questions from the press every time it was interviewed and didn’t even have a public relations department.

Davis himself, known as Elon Musk’s “problem solver”, always avoids speaking engagements and rarely appears in public. Therefore, agreeing to sit and talk with the media attracts attention.

Not stopping there, a few weeks later, Davis continued to lead a reporter Las Vegas Review Journal Visit the tunnel built by the Boring Company under the city, called the Las Vegas Loop. In January, he and a YouTuber drove a Tesla around this city, continuing to mention the project.

Davis’ sudden participation in promotional activities after a decade of silence is puzzling. “We are not transparent enough,” Davis admitted when leading reporters on a tour.

Elon Musk announced the Boring Company idea in late 2016. According to him, the congested streets of Los Angeles and the limitations of the city’s transportation network were the inspiration for the project. The billionaire aims to build an underground highway system, allowing vehicles to travel at high speeds.

In early 2017, Boring Company was established as a subsidiary of SpaceX but separated into a separate business a year later. At the end of 2018, the company completed some tests in Hawthorne, raising $113 million from Musk himself. By 2022, the company will complete its Series C capital call with 675 million USD, thereby being valued at 5.7 billion USD.

In November 2019, Steve Davis became Chairman of Boring Company. According to Business Insiderhe was one of SpaceX’s earliest hires (in 2003) and has two master’s degrees in physics and aerospace engineering, as well as several degrees in finance and mechanical engineering.

Early last year, Boring Company said it would build a 17 km underground tunnel system, allowing driverless cars to pass through in Dubai. The new network, called Dubai Loop, is expected to carry 20,000 passengers per hour, linking with more than 100 stations leading to the city’s main transport hubs and landmarks. Still, according to Interesting Engineering, Progress has not yet been announced.

Although it is no less ambitious than aerospace company SpaceX or brain chip company Neuralink, Boring Company is considered to be progressing slowly. Musk’s goal with this business is to build a “hyperloop” tunnel with a travel speed of 160 km/h, but what has been done for nearly 10 years is only a nearly 6.5 km long tunnel in Las Vegas, mainly carrying tourists at a speed of 56 km/h. Meanwhile, a series of projects in California, Illinois, Texas, Florida and Maryland all stopped at “potential” or almost failed due to many reasons, from political issues to not passing environmental impact assessments.

“I think they realized that, based on the failures that had occurred, they needed to be more proactive in conveying the message,” a former Boring Company employee told Fortune.

According to this site, Davis’ appearance is a “media-pleasing campaign”, at least helping Boring Company attract attention. Although he rarely appears in public, he plays a very important role in Musk’s network of companies and passion projects. He was assigned by the billionaire to cut costs at Twitter/X when he acquired this social network in 2022, as well as being invited to run the Department of Government Performance (DOGE).

Davis’ colleagues describe him as a hands-on manager, frequently texting or in group chats with employees, personally making requests or conferring with regulators and government officials about permits. He was even “ruthless” when running things.

In public, Davis is considered quite clumsy when presenting, but is full of energy, comfort and enthusiasm, factors that can make everything closer. However, some experts think that he needs to do more by taking action to help Boring Company achieve practical results.

“He has had initial messages after a long period of silence, but there hasn’t been anything that proves things are becoming reliable,” commented professor Len Sherman at Columbia Business School. “In the long term, they cannot avoid it forever.”