Some news makes the whole Dream Hall look up from their laptops. This was one of those days.
On 3 November, Hardt Hyperloop announced that it has raised several million euros in a new funding round. The round is led by Green Rock, an investor from the United States, and earlier backers like Perpetuum Ventures and Urban Impact Ventures are back on board.
Quick recap for anyone who missed it: in March, Hardt was declared bankrupt. Losses had piled up, and a European subsidy the company was counting on never came through. Plenty of people wondered if that was the end of hyperloop as a Dutch business.
It wasn't. Hardt says it'll use the money to keep developing its technology, get its planned projects ready and start new ones. Hardt and Green Rock also signed a deal to work on hyperloop projects together across North, Central and South America. Co-founder Tim Houter called it the start of a new chapter after a tough period.
Why this matters to us
Hardt and Delft Hyperloop go way back. In 2017, a group of Delft students took the top prize at the very first SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition in California. That team was Delft Hyperloop, and four of those students went on to start Hardt.
Our paths kept crossing after that. The 420-metre test tube in Veendam, where Hardt showed its vehicle in 2024, is the same tube where our ninth team became the first student team in the world to test, in 2025.
What changes for Delft Hyperloop?
Honestly, not much day to day. Our eleventh team, about 45 students, is still designing and building a new pod for the European Hyperloop Week in Zürich next July.
But it does matter. Student teams like ours get to try new ideas fast. Companies like Hardt have to turn those ideas into something you can actually build, sell and ride. Hyperloop needs both. And every year, a new group of engineers leaves our team looking for a place to keep working on this. It's good news that one of those places is back.
Congratulations to everyone at Hardt. We're curious to see what comes next. In the meantime, we'll keep doing what we do best: building, testing and learning.
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