Actually, I think Iridium (with Bill Gates' help) had a start up capital of 9 billion. I still don't think it will fly but it seems interesting.
Neither do I. The space elevator has no real purpose; we will never need the space elevator, certainly not for the conquest of outer space. There is no mission for the space elevator. We need launch only a few carefully planned payloads to provide the seed for interplanetary development, and then we won't have to launch any great masses from earth for ever after. NASA could have done this by now, but the powers that be chose to waste years and careers for a political gesture of no technological importance. It is no exaggeration to say the ISS is an Orbiting White Elephant and a funding sink. It is exiguation to assert that our present rocket launch system is totally adequate for bootstrapping space development. We have excess launch capability.