Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced via a tweet on Saturday that he would be launching The Boring Company China, the first international extension of his infrastructure and tunnelling construction company, in late August while in Shanghai for the second World Artificial Intelligence Conference.
In another tweet, the founder and CEO of The Boring Company confirmed that it would embark on building underwater tunnels, in addition to planned projects in Los Angeles, Chicago, Maryland, and Las Vegas.
Will also be launching The Boring Company China on this trip
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 3, 2019
Musk created The Boring Company in 2016 as a subsidiary of SpaceX, his private aerospace manufacturing and space transportation company. In 2018, The Boring Company became a separate corporate entity, of which Musk owns 90 percent equity and SpaceX owns 6 percent equity.
Last year, the infrastructure company raised $US112.5 million, 90 percent of which came from Musk, who says he spends between 2 and 3 percent of his time on The Boring Company.
While Musk's tunnelling construction venture has yet to complete any tunnels for commercial or consumer use, it is aiming to complete its first project, a tunnel connecting the two ends of the Las Vegas Convention Center, by the end of 2019.
The company built a 2-mile test tunnel at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, and has projects in mind to build "hyperloop" transportation tunnels in Chicago and between Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
Musk was partly inspired by traffic in Los Angeles in creating The Boring Company, and initially had plans to build tunnels in LA before opposition from local residents caused the project to be put on hold indefinitely.
The CEO is set to make an appearance at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference on August 29 to August 31, which will focus on artificial intelligence topics that include industrial development and technological innovation, along with applications for AI such as education, medical care, urban management, industry, and finance.
This article was originally published by Business Insider.
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