Elon Musk is Expanding The Boring Company to Austin. What’s Up With That?
Well, it looks like Elon is hiring in central Texas.
The Boring Company is Musk’s transportation startup that’s working on new tunnel construction and underground transport projects (reportedly because Elon hates sitting in LA traffic).
It’s news that Austin is getting even more tech jobs, but not surprising.
According to the Austin Chamber of Commerce, the metro area’s tech industry grew “2% more than the average growth rate across all industries in the Austin area from 2017 to 2018. The Austin tech industry has grown by nearly 25% in the past five years, and nearly 30% in the past 10 years.”
It’s a bonafide hotbed, and honestly already was when I start taking research trips there for my book back in 2012-13.
And this isn’t the first time Elon has made this kind of move.
Per Techcrunch:
Austin is becoming a hotbed of Musk-related activity. Tesla, which Musk leads, picked in July a site near Austin for its next U.S. factory, a four to five-million-square foot $1.1 billion plant that will assemble the automaker’s futuristic Cybertruck, the Tesla Semi and the Model Y and Model 3 for sales to customers on the East Coast.
Musk described the future factory as an “ecological paradise,” with a boardwalk and bike lanes and where the public will be welcome. It’s unclear if the first customer of The Boring Company will be Tesla.
Easy to say this move is a way to save on costs, but the reality is more basic than even that. The Boring Company is taking on customers all over the country — last year it inked a deal to put together a new people mover at the Las Vegas Convention Center — and hiring locally for infrastructure projects like this just makes sense. The Boring Company now has work in Austin, so it’s setting up shop there.