Hyperloop One

Hyperloop One, known as Virgin Hyperloop until November 2022, was an American transportation technology company that worked to commercialize high-speed travel utilizing the Hyperloop concept which was a variant of the vacuum train. The company was established on June 1, 2014, and reorganized and renamed on October 12, 2017.

Hyperloop systems were intended to move cargo and passengers at airline speeds but at a fraction of the cost. They were designed to run suspended by magnetic systems in a partially-evacuated tube. The original Hyperloop concept proposed to use a linear electric motor to accelerate and decelerate an air bearing levitated pod through a low-pressure tube. The vehicle was to glide silently at speeds up to 760 mph (1223.1 km/h) with very low turbulence. The system was proposed to be entirely autonomous, quiet, direct-to-destination, and on-demand. As it was proposed to be built on columns or tunneled underground, it would have eliminated the dangers of at-grade crossings and would have required smaller rights of way than high-speed rail or a highway. Virgin Hyperloop has made substantive technical changes to Elon Musk's initial proposal and chose not to pursue the Los Angeles–to–San Francisco notional route that Musk envisioned in his 2013 alpha-design white paper.

The company demonstrated a form of propulsion technology on May 11, 2016, at its test site in North Las Vegas. It has completed a 500-meter Development Loop (DevLoop) and on May 12, 2017, held its first full-scale test. The test combined Hyperloop components including vacuum, propulsion, levitation, sled, control systems, tube, and structures.

On November 8, 2020, after more than 400 uncrewed tests, the firm conducted the first human trial at a speed of 172 km/h (107 mph) at its test site in Las Vegas, Nevada. However, in February 2022, the company abandoned plans for human rated travel and instead focused on freight, firing more than 100 employees amounting to half its total workforce. In November of that year the company decided to rebrand, reverting to the name, Hyperloop One.

It was announced on December 21, 2023 that the company would be shutting down on December 31, 2023 because of a number of factors including financial challenges, high interest rates, initial backing and support, as well as to its failure to secure any contracts for building a working hyperloop system; it began selling its assets and laying off remaining employees. According to The Verge, all of its intellectual property would shift to its majority stakeholder, major Dubai port operator DP World.