The hyperloop’s first stop? Maybe Slovakia.

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies Inc. said Thursday it agreed with the Slovakian government to explore building a hyperloop there, the first formal sign of interest from a federal government in building the futuristic tube-transport system.

Billionaire inventor Elon Musk unveiled the idea of the hyperloop in 2013, calling it the fifth mode of transportation and describing a near-vacuum tube in which levitating capsules carry passengers at about 760 miles an hour, or nearly the speed of sound.

Under its agreement with Slovakia, Hyperloop Transportation said it would explore routes between Vienna, Budapest and Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, a Central European nation of 5.4 million people. The company said Bratislava to Vienna — about an hour drive apart — could take about eight minutes in a hyperloop at full speed. Bratislava to Budapest could take 10 minutes.

Still, transportation experts have said it is unlikely a hyperloop would travel at full speed for much of its trip because even slight turns at such high speeds could make passengers sick.

Hyperloop Transportation’s operating chief Bibop G. Gresta, left, and CEO Dirk Ahlborn.
Patrick T. Fallon for The Wall Street Journal

Two Los Angeles-based companies are trying to make the hyperloop a reality. Hyperloop Transportation and its crosstown rival Hyperloop Technologies Inc. are both planning to start building smaller-scale versions in California and Nevada this year to prove that the system is possible.

The companies have said they have met with government officials in more than a dozen countries, including China, India and the United Kingdom, though none had made formal agreements toward a hyperloop before Slovakia.

The rivals face major technical hurdles, including levitating the passenger capsules with powerful magnets and making a miles-long tube a near vacuum. Still, some transportation experts say commercial viability may be the hyperloop’s biggest challenge, in part because a full-scale system would likely cost billions of dollars to build.

Hyperloop Transportation is largely funded by its 450 employees across the globe, most of whom work part time for equity and keep their day jobs at places like Boeing Co. and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The group of engineers, scientists, antiterrorism experts and others created the company in 2013 after banding together on a crowdsourcing website following the release of Mr. Musk’s hyperloop white paper.

Mr. Musk’s commercial-space firm Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is also hosting a competition this year for student teams and independent engineering groups to design the best hyperloop capsule.

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