A moon hotel is taking reservations

PLUS: Patients control AI and robotics with thought

Jennifer Mossalgue

January 13, 2026

Good morning, tech enthusiasts. A 22-year-old Berkeley-trained engineer says he wants to build a luxury hotel on the moon — and he’s taking six-figure deposits from anyone willing to book a room.

His startup, called GRU Space, has already raised money from Y Combinator. It’s audacious even by Silicon Valley standards, but for a certain class of techno-optimist, the moon is starting to look less like a celestial body and more like a lifestyle upgrade.

In today’s tech rundown:

This moon hotel is taking reservations
Google’s founders are leaving California
Trump wants Big Tech to eat AI’s power bills
How much Tim Cook made last year
Quick hits on other tech news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

SPACE TECH

🌝 This moon hotel is taking reservations

Image source: GRU / YouTube

The Rundown: A YC-backed startup called GRU Space says it wants to build the first lunar hotel, taking deposits of $250K–$1M from wealthy true believers who are willing to reserve a bed on the moon years before the infrastructure exists.

The details:

The tiny startup plans to launch its first hotel, an inflatable structure, in 2032, giving SpaceX travelers an option off the Starship, Ars Technica reports.
The first tech demo is a 10kg payload slated for a commercial lunar lander in 2029, meant to prove out inflatable structures and on-site manufacturing.
Founder Skyler Chan, a 22-year-old UC Berkeley engineer, previously interned at Tesla and worked on a NASA-funded 3D printer flown to space.
GRU pitches itself as an infrastructure company that will mine outer space to support long-term human settlements.

Why it matters: Chan says the first hotel would be launched in 2032 and capable of supporting up to four guests, with the next iterations, built from moon bricks, taking on the style of San Francisco’s Palace of the Fine Arts. It’s an audacious vision bordering on absurd, but it has already received Y Combinator’s validation.

GOOGLE

🧳 Google’s founders are leaving California

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

The Rundown: Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are quickly severing many of their remaining financial ties to California just as the state weighs a one-time 5% wealth tax on billionaires.

The details:

In December, Brin-linked entities dissolved or shifted 15 California LLCs to Nevada, covering assets such as his superyacht and a private jet terminal.
Page has likewise moved or wound down dozens of entities and is positioning himself in lower-tax states.
The proposed wealth tax would apply retroactively to anyone living in California as of January 1 and could affect roughly 200 ultrawealthy residents.
The plan has split Silicon Valley: LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman opposes the levy, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says he is “perfectly fine” paying it.

Why it matters: When two tech legends worth $300B each start shuffling superyachts out of state, California has reason to worry. The state pulls roughly 40% its income tax revenue from the top 1% of earners. But apparently, most of the ultrawealthy stayed put past the January 1 deadline, so the rumored mass exodus hasn’t happened yet.

DATA CENTERS

⚡️ Trump wants Big Tech to eat AI’s power bills

Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown

The Rundown: President Donald Trump says he'll force Microsoft and other tech giants to cover the soaring electricity costs of their AI data centers instead of letting those power bills hit voters’ wallets.

The details:

Trump said Americans should never pay higher electricity bills “because of data centers” and vowed to announce new measures in the coming weeks.
He singled out Microsoft as the first company expected to implement “major changes” to ensure consumers don’t “pick up the tab” for its AI network.
Analysts estimate U.S. data centers could nearly triple their share of national electricity use to around 12% by 2028.
A recent PJM grid auction attributed roughly $23B in capacity costs to data centers from 2025 to 2028 — about half the total.

Why it matters: AI data centers are driving power demand so quickly that Washington now treats electricity prices as a political flashpoint, with Trump leaning on Big Tech not to pass rising costs to voters. Yet he previously fast‑tracked data‑center hookups, leaving him both hyping the AI buildout and scrambling to contain its backlash.

APPLE

🍎 How much Tim Cook made last year

Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown

The Rundown: Apple’s latest proxy filing shows that CEO Tim Cook was paid about $74.3M in 2025, a hair below his 2024 package and still overwhelmingly tied to stock awards and performance bonuses rather than salary.

The details:

Breakdown: $3M salary, about $57.5M in stock awards, $12M in performance-based cash, and roughly $1.76M in other compensation.
“Other” compensation includes 401(k) contributions, life insurance, vacation cash-out, security, and personal air travel costs.
Apple spent around $887,870 on Cook’s personal security and about $789,991 on private air travel in 2025 alone.
Senior execs like Sabih Khan, Deirdre O’Brien, and Kate Adams each made about $27M, while new CFO Kevan Parekh received roughly $22.5M.

Why it matters: Cook’s pay package puts him near the top of the U.S. CEO ranks, alongside Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, whose compensation recently hit about $96.5M — but well below the most extreme outliers, which keeps Apple in the broader debate over whether executive pay is tethered to performance or simply market power.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in tech today

Paramount Skydance sued Warner Bros. Discovery in Delaware court to force more disclosure about WBD’s planned sale of its studio and streaming assets to Netflix.

Meta reportedly plans to cut about 10% of jobs in its 15K-person Reality Labs, shifting investments from metaverse and VR projects into AI-powered wearables.

Disney+ is adding a TikTok-style vertical feed of clips from its content library to boost daily engagement and compete with short-form platforms for users’ attention.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, became the latest tech giant to surpass a $4T market valuation, as investor AI optimism drives the stock to record highs.

The FCC authorized SpaceX to launch and operate another 7.5K Starlink satellites, bringing its approved Gen2 constellation to 15K spacecraft.

Netflix dominated the 83rd Golden Globes with seven awards, including four for breakout limited series “Adolescence” and two for animated hit “KPop Demon Hunters.”

Meta shut down nearly 550K Australian accounts belonging to under‑16s across Instagram, Facebook, and Threads to comply with the country’s new social media ban.

Apple led the 2025 global smartphone market with a 20% shipment share, narrowly beating Samsung and Xiaomi, per Counterpoint data.

Uber faces a Phoenix trial over a woman’s sexual-assault claim against a driver, a case that could expose serious holes in the company’s safety practices.

The EU is exploring a minimum-price scheme for Chinese EVs as an alternative to tariffs, aiming to curb state subsidies without completely choking off imports.

Tesla reportedly just started producing a new solar panel at its Buffalo Gigafactory, a sign its struggling solar business might not be completely dead yet.

COMMUNITY