Prufrock

Prufrock is The Boring Company's own all-electric tunnel boring machine (TBM), the giant cylindrical drill that grinds out a tunnel and lines it with concrete as it moves forward. The company designed it from scratch to replace Godot, the secondhand machine that dug its first tunnel in Hawthorne, California, and Prufrock machines now dig the Loop tunnels under Las Vegas and Nashville.

What is Prufrock?

Prufrock is a family of machines that The Boring Company builds in Bastrop, Texas. In September 2025 the company called Prufrock-4 its smartest, fastest, and safest TBM, with Prufrock-5, -6, and -7 under construction in Texas. On October 14, 2026, Prufrock-5 arrived at Morgan's Inclusion Campus in San Antonio, where it will dig a 0.8-mile tunnel across the campus once final permits are approved, the company's first tunnel in San Antonio. A hard-rock version, Prufrock-MB, is cutting through limestone for the Music City Loop in Nashville. On March 9, 2026, Prufrock-2 finished the company's longest drive, a 2.28-mile tunnel near Westgate Las Vegas, after moving about 68,000 cubic yards of dirt.

Why Prufrock Exists

Elon Musk founded The Boring Company in December 2016 to “solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic,” and the obstacle was the speed and price of tunneling. The company blames two habits of conventional machines. Crews spend weeks digging a launch pit before the first foot of tunnel exists, and soft-soil machines mine about 5 feet, stop to set the concrete lining, and start again. Prufrock was designed to remove both.

How it Works

Three features set Prufrock apart. Porpoising lets it tilt down from a truck and dive into the ground within about 24 hours, with no pit and no giant crane, then surface again at the far end. Continuous mining sets the precast concrete lining while the cutting head keeps digging. Zero-People-in-Tunnel (ZPIT) means nobody works underground during normal digging: the machine runs from an operations control center, which the company calls the safest, fastest, and least expensive way to tunnel. On its record drive, Prufrock-2 sent dirt back along about 4.8 miles of conveyor belt driven by six motors totaling 825 horsepower.

The Economics of Prufrock

The Boring Company says Prufrock is aiming for 1 mile of tunnel a week at an all-in cost under $5 million a mile for a Loop tunnel. That pairing is the business case: tunnels cheap and fast enough to sell at a profit instead of being built one at a time as public megaprojects. The company's April 2022 Series C raised $675 million at a $5.675 billion valuation, partly to speed up Prufrock development, and its Series D raised $3 billion on September 9, 2026 at a $23 billion valuation.

Current Status of Prufrock

Prufrock machines dig the newer Las Vegas tunnels. Prufrock-1 surfaced beneath Westgate in November 2023 with no retrieval pit, and Prufrock-3 finished its first Las Vegas tunnel in September 2024. The Boring Company says it has built more than 10 miles of tunnel in Las Vegas, where the Vegas Loop has carried more than 4 million passengers through 14 stations. Clark County and the City of Las Vegas have approved 68 miles of tunnel in all.

What Comes Next

The model is leaving Nevada. In Nashville, where the Tennessee Department of Transportation issued the Music City Loop's tunnel permit on February 25, 2026, Prufrock-MB1 and Prufrock-MB2 were both digging by October, Prufrock-MB3 was set to launch in late October, and Prufrock-MB4 was being built. The company wants four machines underground there by the end of 2026, on a route meant to bring the airport within about 10 minutes of Lower Broadway. In Dubai, The Boring Company has signed a construction contract with the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) for a pilot Loop of 6.4 kilometers and four stations, linking the Dubai International Financial Centre to Dubai Mall.

The Bottom Line

Prufrock is Elon's bet that tunneling can become fast and cheap enough to make dense underground transit pay. The $5 million a mile figure is the company's target, and the machines are adding stations in Las Vegas and digging under Nashville.