Hyperloop One to shut down and sell its assets, says report

Futuristic high-speed freight transportation company Hyperloop One will shut down and cease operations by the end of 2023, Bloomberg News has reported. 

The firm, once backed by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, has been reportedly unable to win any contract to build a working hyperloop, and has been forced to lay off its employees and sell off its remaining assets. 

The Los Angeles-based firm completed the world’s first passenger ride on a super high-speed levitating pod system in 2020. Its goal was to enable passengers to move from city to city at airplane-like speeds, using vacuum-sealed tubes and magnetic levitation.

The original idea for a hyperloop was first brought forth by Elon Musk in a white paper in 2013. It has been theorised that using such a hyperloop system would mean a trip between New York and Washington would take just 30 minutes – twice as fast as a commercial jet flight and four times faster than a high-speed train.

Hyperloop One was founded in 2014 and raised more than $400m. The company took on the name Virgin Hyperloop One after Branson invested in 2017, but the investor stepped down a year later due to conflicts in opinions with Saudi Arabia, which had been set to fund a planned project with the start-up.

The start-up then underwent another rebranding when Dubai port operator DP World took majority control of the firm. The company then dropped the Virgin branding and pivoted its focus to cargo in early 2022, cutting half the staff at the time. 

Hyperloop One had once dreamed of building a high-speed freight link between Europe and China that could take cargo from one end to the other in a single day – a feat that it will now be unable to achieve.