Musk’s ‘self-growing’ Moon city

PLUS: China's Wegovy-style nasal spray

Jennifer Mossalgue

February 10, 2026

Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Elon Musk is now reshuffling SpaceX’s cosmic priority stack: Mars can wait. The Moon can’t.

He's selling investors on a “self-growing” lunar city within the decade. Perks? Flight windows every 10 days versus 26 months, a two-day commute versus six, and a pivot that conveniently locks Starship deeper into Artemis’s gravitational pull.

In today’s tech rundown:

Musk wants the moon first, not Mars
China’s Wegovy-style nasal spray
Lyft finally launches ride-sharing for teens
Ferrari taps Jony Ive for its first EV
Quick hits on other tech news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

SPACEX

🌝 Musk wants the moon first, not Mars

Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown

The Rundown: Elon Musk just demoted his once‑sacred Mars dream, recasting SpaceX’s mission around a faster, cheaper prize: building a self‑sustaining city on the Moon within a decade.

The details:

Musk says SpaceX has “shifted focus” from a near‑term Mars settlement to building a “self‑growing” city on the lunar surface.
He claims a lunar city could be achieved in under 10 years, while a comparable Mars city would likely take more than 20 years.
The math favors the Moon: launch windows open every 10 days with a two-day transit, versus every 26 months and a six-month journey to reach Mars.
The pivot aligns with investor briefings and reports of an uncrewed Starship lunar landing target around March 2027.

Why it matters: Musk’s Moon-first shift drops SpaceX squarely into the slipstream of NASA’s Artemis program, which is already counting on Starship as its ride to the lunar surface and eventually a permanent base. Mars isn’t dead — Musk says serious work starts in five to seven years.

BIOTECH

💉 China’s Wegovy-style nasal spray

Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown

The Rundown: A Chinese biotech firm is reportedly racing to turn Wegovy’s blockbuster weight-loss molecule into a cheaper, needle‑free nasal spray, with global trials slated for completion by 2028.

The details:

Shanghai Shiling Pharmaceutical is developing a nasal spray that uses semaglutide, the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk’s weight-loss drug Wegovy.
It promises a cheaper, more user‑friendly format for long‑term weight management in a country with a fast‑growing GLP‑1 market.
Timing is key: Novo’s core semaglutide patent in China expires in March, and Shiling has already staked out IP before global exclusivity ends in the 2030s.
Sweden’s Iconovo is already working on a Western intranasal semaglutide, developing an ICOone Nasal obesity spray now in preclinical proof‑of‑concept.

Why it matters: Obesity drugs are fast becoming one of the most valuable drug classes on the planet, and converting semaglutide into a spray could drop the barrier to adoption. If rivals time it right as exclusivity unwinds, they could undercut Novo and Lilly on price — and capture a serious share of the next decade's market.

LYFT

🚘 Lyft finally launches ride-sharing for teens

Image source: Lyft

The Rundown: Ride-hailing company Lyft is rolling out teen accounts that let 13- to 17-year-olds hail rides in more than 200 U.S. cities while parents watch from their phones — pitching it as a way to get screen-addicted Gen Alpha out of the house.

The details:

Only parents or guardians can create teen profiles and payment methods, and only vetted, highly rated drivers who opt in can be matched with teen riders.
Safety features include PIN verification, audio recording, Smart Trip Check-In for unusual route changes, and live location tracking for parents.
Teens are allowed to bring friends along if parents approve in the app, turning Lyft into a quasi-chaperoned way to reach school, jobs, malls, or hangouts.
The move follows Uber, which launched its own teen accounts in 2024, and Waymo, which offers teen rides via its robotaxi service in Phoenix and LA.

Why it matters: The launch reverses Lyft’s long-standing ban on unaccompanied minors and lands squarely in the middle of a growing debate over Gen Alpha’s lack of independence. Lyft is betting that ride-hailing can become the antidote to screen-induced isolation — a way to get kids out of their rooms and into the world.

EVS

🐎 Ferrari taps Jony Ive for its first EV

Image source: Ferrari

The Rundown: Ferrari just unveiled the Jony Ive–designed interior of the Luce, its first electric supercar, featuring a glass‑and‑aluminum cockpit that rejects the touchscreen-dominated cabins common across modern EVs.

The details:

Ferrari has named its first fully electric supercar the Luce and unveiled its interior ahead of an exterior reveal planned in Italy this May.
The cabin was co-designed by Ive and Marc Newson’s LoveFrom studio, mixing retro Ferrari cues with minimalist details like layered OLED displays.
The Luce uses a glass key made from Corning Gorilla/Fusion5 glass with an E‑Ink display that changes color when docked.
Underneath the design is a 122 kWh battery feeding four electric motors for more than 1K horsepower, 0–60 mph in 2.5 seconds, and a 330-mile range.

Why it matters: Ferrari is testing whether collectors will spend north of $600K for an electric halo car co-designed by the man behind the iPhone. It drops the Luce straight into the ring with Porsche’s Taycan Turbo GT, Lucid’s Air Sapphire, Tesla’s Model S Plaid, and the new wave of electric hypercars.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in tech today

YouTube added an AI feature that lets Premium users generate music playlists from text or voice prompts on iOS and Android.

Instagram is reportedly internally testing “Instants,” a standalone Snapchat‑style app and related Instagram feature for sending disappearing photos and messages.

Decentralized social network Bluesky finally rolled out a long‑requested drafts feature, letting users save unfinished posts to edit and publish later.

Salesforce cut some 1K jobs across teams like marketing, product, data, and AI while reshuffling its top ranks with six new execs replacing five departing leaders.

YouTube megastar MrBeast is buying Gen Z–focused fintech app Step to turn his massive teen fanbase into financial-product customers.

A “March for Billionaires” in San Francisco to protest California’s proposed Billionaire Tax Act reportedly attracted only a few dozen supporters and some onlookers.

A new 50 MW wave energy pilot project is moving into development, aiming to prove that large‑scale ocean wave farms can reliably feed clean power into the grid.

Stellantis is taking a massive $26B hit to unwind ambitious electric‑vehicle plans, cancel several EV models, and shift back toward gasoline and hybrid cars.

Scientists are excited about a new nasal spray bird flu vaccine that triggers a strong immune response in animal tests and could block the virus right away.

New York state lawmakers introduced a bill to impose at least a three‑year moratorium on permits for building and operating new data centers.

COMMUNITY