Elon Musk claims his Boring Company tunnelling firm has raised US$300,000 by selling hats
The Tesla CEO unveiled the ‘Inital Hat Offering’ in March
By Arjun Kharpal
Billionaire Elon Musk claims to have made US$300,000 in hat sales for his tunnelling venture called The Boring Company.
Musk founded the tunnelling firm after becoming frustrated with traffic in Los Angeles. His idea is to build a series of tunnels under L.A. with cars ferried around on pods at around 125 mph.
And to build up hype for the company, the Tesla CEO unveiled a hat in March with “The Boring Company” emblazoned on the front.
The cap finally went on sale in October for US$20 each.
Now Musk has revealed that proceeds from hat sales are over US$300,000 and the money will be used to fund “more boring.” That would mean around 15,000 caps have been sold.
Musk has been slowly revealing parts of the project on social media. In July, he s showed off the elevator that would lower cars to the underground network of tunnels in order to shoot them across the city. He then said that his second digging machine was almost ready for action, before sharing the first picture of a tunnel dug in L.A .
In August, Musk received approval from the City Council in Hawthorne, California, to build a two-mile test tunnel.
Musk jokingly referred to the fundraising via hat sales as an “initial hat offering,” taking a dig at the initial coin offering (ICO) seen in the cryptocurrency world. And ICO is when a company sells digital tokens in exchange for cryptocurrency, but investors don’t get a stake in the firm. ICOs so far have got a bad rap, with one start-up called Confido raising US$375,000 then disappearing with the money .
