Robot tunnelling start-up HyperTunnel has gone into administration.
The Hampshire-headquartered firm, which was chaired by former Network Rail chief executive Mark Carne, went under earlier this week after failing to attract new investment, according to insolvency specialists Opus.
The company had sought to use a combination of artificial intelligence, 3D printing and “swarm” robotics to reduce the time and costs associated with underground tunnelling.
It aimed to improve tunnelling by using dozens or hundreds of small robots and programming them to coordinate as a team, instead of using traditional methods such as boring.
Joint administrator Paul Davis, from Opus, said the business stopped trading because it could not meet deadlines to repay loans from previous investors this month.
He said: “The business had run out of cash, despite the efforts of the directors to arrange further funding.
“Following that, the directors were left with no option other than to put the company into administration to protect the business and allow us as administrators to try and sell it.”
Davis added that the administrators will now explore whether there is scope to save the company and the jobs of its 40 employees. No redundancies have yet been made, he said.
Formed in 2020, HyperTunnel never became large enough to file full accounts. At the time of its latest published accounts, 30 April 2023, it owed creditors £9.7m.
In 2022, the firm successfully carried out a test for Network Rail in which it tunnelled a 6 metre-long structure to demonstrate the new construction process.
That same year, it received a cash injection from Vinci through the latter’s innovation programme, Catalyst.
HyperTunnel was named by construction-innovation investor Cemex Ventures as being among the top-50 construction tech start-ups in 2021 and 2023.
In 2023, HyperTunnel signed a memorandum of understanding with the University of Birmingham to accelerate the development of its technology.
That month, HyperTunnel co-chief executive and co-founder Jeremy Hammond told Construction News that the company was looking to work with industry partners and was discussing exclusive distribution arrangements around the world.
“We are not contracting directly with Network Rail but partnering with contractors who are going to deliver solutions to Network Rail,” he said.
“Contractors do what they do much better than us. We’re not trying to compete with contractors, we are delivering options and solutions to them.”
