This segment originally aired Dec. 9, 2016, on VICE News Tonight on HBO.
Shervin Pishevar is a startup investor and one of the central social figures in Silicon Valley. He recently founded Hyperloop One, a project to move people long distances through tubes at supersonic speeds.His reputation and fortune come largely from a single investment he made in 2011 while at the VC firm Menlo Ventures: a $26 million stake in a small ride-hailing app called Uber. Those shares are now worth more than $5 billion.Pishevar’s friend Elon Musk came up with the idea for Hyperloop, which promises to take passengers from L.A. to San Francisco in 35 minutes with no friction and no pollution, and handed it off to Pishevar to develop.The company is working on a plan to build a link between Abu Dhabi and Dubai, but we likely won’t see a Hyperloop in America anytime soon. Pishevar’s project has raised only $160 million, while some estimate it will cost up to $100 billion to complete a loop between L.A. and San Francisco.Read next: Trump and a bunch of Silicon Valley CEOs sat at a big table and pretended to like each other