Elon Musk's Boring Company buys industrial site near Tesla's under-construction Texas factory
- The Boring Company recently purchased or leased a warehouse space near Austin, public records show.
- The site is about 16 miles from Tesla's factory site in Travis County, which is currently under construction.
- Elon Musk made waves earlier this month by announcing a move from California to Texas, where all three of his companies have significant operations.
The Boring Company appears to have acquired a plot of industrial land near where Tesla is building a factory in the Austin, Texas metro area.
Documents filed with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation on December 7, first spotted by the Austin Business Journal Tuesday, show Elon Musk's tunneling venture seeking permission for a $130,000 renovation project at a warehouse location in Travis County. The 40,000-square-foot site is about 16 miles from Tesla's under-construction factory near Austin in the town of Pflugerville.
Real-estate listings show the the warehouse has been for lease since early November.
The Boring Company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
The company hasn't publicly announced any projects in Texas, though it has been hiring in the Lone Star State for some time. Currently, it's building a tunnel to connect two ends of Las Vegas' convention center, but the project is delayed and potentially much less efficient than originally promised.
"Rumor has it that 'Austin Chalk' is geologically one of best soils for tunneling," the company said in November. "Want to find out? Austin jobs now available."
The company currently has eight postings for jobs in Austin.
The new filings come days after Musk confirmed publicly for the first time that he had moved to Texas in wake of a spat with California over coronavirus restrictions that temporarily shuttered Tesla's only US car factory.
"First of all, Tesla and SpaceX obviously have massive operations in California. In fact, it's worth noting that Tesla is the last car company still manufacturing cars in California. SpaceX is the last aerospace company still doing significant manufacturing in California," he said on December 8. "There used to be over a dozen car plants in California. And California used to be the center of aerospace manufacturing! My companies are the last two left. That's a very important point to make."
Musk also quietly moved his charitable foundation to Austin over the summer before his public announcement, records show.
Census data makes it clear that he's far from the only former Californian to call Texas home. Any Boring Company employees moving from its current headquarters near SpaceX's Southern California home will join nearly 700,000 others that have made the move over the past decade.