Phoenix Boring was born out of a deep belief in the potential of trenchless technology to revolutionize the underground construction industry. For years, the challenges of underground infrastructure—especially in difficult and varying geological conditions—have stifled the growth and efficiency of projects globally. Traditional methods often disrupt communities, environments, and economies, while existing trenchless solutions are costly and limited in their applicability
Our journey began with Zilper Trenchless, where we pioneered innovative trenchless technologies that set new standards in the industry. This work continued at Petra, where we advanced these innovations further, developing a multi-platform trenchless system and the next generation of jet boring technology. Despite the technical success, Petra wound down its operations in 2024. But the potential and promise of the technology were too significant to let go.
Believing deeply in the value of the work we had done, our founder, Roberto Zillante, decided to take a personal and professional leap. He invested his own savings to buy back the only two Multi-platform ADB48 machines in the U.S. from Petra, representing the culmination of his life's work. With these machines, we successfully completed a 500ft main gas pipeline project for PG&E in California—a project that proved the robustness of our technology even under challenging and changing ground conditions.
This success, combined with the commitment shown by risking own resources, attracted the interest of investors. With their support, we acquired the remaining key assets from Petra, including most of the intellectual property and hard assets, and founded Phoenix Boring Inc.
Phoenix Boring is not just another construction company; it’s the continuation of a mission to revolutionize the way we think about and approach underground construction. By combining advanced technology with a deep understanding of the industry's needs, we are poised to tackle the most difficult geologies with minimal disruption, making trenchless solutions more accessible and affordable than ever before. Our journey is just beginning, and we are excited to lead the industry into a new era of innovation and efficiency.
The most significant risk for underground contractors is encountering ground conditions they could not anticipate previously. For example, when civil engineers plan the routes for underground conduits, they get borehole samples every few hundreds or so feet and then produce a report that informs the construction team what type of geology they will encounter. Based on this geological report, the construction and engineering groups will choose a boring machine. But the resolution on these reports is too coarse: sometimes, between samples, there are often changes in ground conditions that they didn't sample and therefore, didn’t anticipate. If you get this wrong, you often also have chosen the wrong boring machine. And if you chose the wrong boring machine and encounter a nightmare geology, you have a high risk of your machine getting stuck in the ground.
Soft soil changes to the ground with cobblestones which vary to hard rock; there has been no single method that can bore through all geologies, specially at small diameters. This is such a problem that many construction companies append up to a 30% markup, called a contingency fee, on their jobs for the what-if scenario they hit geology that they cannot anticipate.
On both longer pipeline jobs, this is a huge problem because you run the risk of encountering more types of geologies, especially nightmare ones. But on short haul boring projects it’s also a risky problem because contractors don’t want to run the risk of losing their machine in the ground! It makes sense: why would a contractor jeopardize their expensive - sometimes multi-million dollar equipment - on a short haul job if they run the risk of losing it underground. The opportunity costs of their machinery getting stuck and not earning money on new jobs is too great.
We want to remove the risk from undergrounding jobs and we’re doing this by focusing on building technologies that can bore through all geologies, especially nightmare geologies.
For hard rock, we’ve developed the world’s first non-contact hard rock cutterhead that can bore utility tunnels quickly through previously impenetrable rock (like 44K PSI Sioux Quartzite) using a process called thermal spallation. We thermally shock the rock in a controlled way by blasting it with 1000+ mph of mass flow and heat to break up the rock into tiny little pieces that are then evacuated out of the tunnel using our proprietary spoils removal system. We have developed 10 novel subsystems to support our new cutterhead.
Boring hard rock below 60" in diameter have been more fiction than reality—until now. This lack of technical capability has stymied utility providers working in hard rock geologies. Phoenix Boring's tunneling robot bores through the hardest, most abrasive ground conditions on earth, and it is the first of its kind. Our hard rock method is the 0 to 1 improvement in the industry.
The harder the rock, the more conventional methods struggle. In contrast, our Jet Bore module is designed for the toughest, nightmare geologies, and we're just getting started.
The US national grid, established more than 40 years ago, wasn't built to withstand climate change or new strains on the system. Without a new approach, the stresses will only get worse. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects global energy demand will increase by 50% in the next 30 years, requiring more transmission lines - if we want a resilient infrastructure, power lines must be undergrounded.
Furthermore, we need to increase the number of new utility tunnel installations for water and sewer. There are 240,000 water main breaks a year due to our aging infrastructure in the US. Coastal communities need new sewage lines to replace old septic tanks because rising sea waters are causing them to fail and seep into the ground and pollute waterways. In the future, we will need to bury more fiber bundles to keep up with our data demands, requiring wider diameter conduits, which should be underground if we want to make our communications infrastructure more resilient. And new utilities like green hydrogen are likely going to need new pipes too. In other words, all critical infrastructure is going to have to be undergrounded if we want to keep communities lit, connected and safe.
Phoenix Boring is the only company solely focused on building new technologies to underground our critical infrastructure at scale.
