Nvidia and YC invested in a company, aiming to build a hotel on the Moon by 2032.

Written by: Curry, Deep Tide TechFlow

In 1980, Dennis Hope, an unemployed used car salesman in California, walked into a San Francisco government office claiming he wanted to “claim” ownership of the entire Moon.

The staff thought he was crazy.

But after reviewing the laws, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty only prohibits countries from owning the Moon; it doesn’t say individuals can’t. Hope exploited this loophole, wrote a letter to the United Nations claiming the Moon was his, but received no reply.

So Hope registered a company called “Lunar Embassy” and started selling lunar land. One acre for $20, including a gold-embossed deed and satellite photo.

Forty-five years later, Hope has sold 600 million acres of lunar land, with clients including famous actors like Tom Cruise and John Travolta, and reportedly three former U.S. presidents. How much did he make?

$12 million.

This business has been labeled as “exorbitant profits and madness” in China and is explicitly prohibited. But in the U.S., Hope remains at large, still selling deeds.

Now, a 22-year-old says:

Selling land is too low-level. I want to open a hotel on the Moon.

This company is called GRU Space, full name Galactic Resource Utilization, which just opened reservations for future hotel rooms last week.

Founder Skyler Chan, with dual degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley, graduated last May, a year earlier than the usual schedule.

We checked his background, and it’s impressive: got a pilot license at 16, worked on vehicle software at Tesla, and built a NASA-funded 3D printer that was sent to space.

The company entered YC (Y Combinator), the most famous startup incubator in Silicon Valley; Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox all came from there.

Behind it are support plans from Nvidia, and investors from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the military-industrial unicorn Anduril.

Sounds impressive, right?

YC’s profile states clearly: 2 full-time employees.

Two people aiming to open a hotel on the Moon within 6 years.

Although I can’t afford to go, out of curiosity, I looked into their fee structure.

Application fee: $1,000, non-refundable. If selected, a deposit of $250,000 or $1 million is required, refundable within 30 days if you change your mind; afterward, you can only get a refund after the hotel is built. The final price of the room could “exceed $10 million.”

The timeline is as follows:

Screen applications in 2026, hold a private auction in 2027, conduct the first lunar landing test in 2029, deploy hotel modules in 2031, and open for business in 2032.

This model reminds me of Virgin Galactic—the space tourism company founded by British billionaire Richard Branson.

Branson is the boss of Virgin Group, involved in airlines, music, cola, and more. In 2005, he announced plans to take ordinary people to space, started collecting deposits of $200,000 per person, with a planned first flight in 2007.

Then came 2008, 2009, 2010…

In 2011, 75-year-old Alan Walton couldn’t wait any longer and demanded a refund. He said he had climbed Kilimanjaro, visited the Arctic, and parachuted over Everest—only space was left. But he was old and truly couldn’t wait anymore.

In 2014, Virgin Galactic’s spaceship crashed during testing, killing one pilot. Some customers demanded refunds and received them.

In 2021, Branson finally flew to space himself. Customers breathed a sigh of relief, thinking it was finally their turn.

In 2022, an 84-year-old Bulgarian named Chapadjiev got his refund. He paid in 2007 and waited 15 years, always told “next year’s flight.” He said relatives in Bulgaria kept asking when he’d go to space, and he couldn’t answer.

Virgin Galactic’s ticket price has now risen to $450,000, with a $150,000 deposit, of which $25,000 is non-refundable. Commercial flights have indeed started, but only to the edge of space for a few minutes before returning.

What GRU Space aims to do is send you to live on the Moon for a few days. That’s several orders of magnitude more difficult.

And Virgin Galactic took 20 years, spent billions of dollars, lost lives, to get where it is today. GRU Space has only 2 full-time employees and has set aside 6 years for the project.

But I don’t think this is a scam.

The founder of GRU, the 22-year-old Berkeley graduate, stated in the white paper that he knows this is a gamble, and he’s proud of it. He said if successful, it would be one of the most influential events in human history.

It sounds crazy, but the logic is self-consistent.

The Trump administration planned to build a lunar base, and NASA’s new director Jared Isaacman, a billionaire who paid to go to space himself, announced that by 2030, they aim to establish a “preliminary facility.”

Chan bets that the government doesn’t have time to develop everything from scratch and must rely on commercial companies. He wants to be that reliant party.

The white paper for this project quotes a line:

“If the U.S. must build a lunar base within ten years, there’s no time to invent those peculiar devices exclusive to government.”

So, the $1 million deposit isn’t just for a hotel room. It’s a ticket to the race, betting on the future direction of U.S. space policy.

Finally, a detail.

The company name is GRU, and the white paper ends with: “It’s time to steal the Moon.”

It’s time to steal the Moon.

Gru from “Despicable Me” also wanted to steal the Moon. In the end, he didn’t succeed, but he adopted three orphans and became a good dad.

I wonder if Skyler Chan has seen that movie.

And I wonder whether, six years from now, those who paid deposits will be living in lunar hotels, or will they, like 84-year-old Chapadjiev, end up refunding and giving up.

Anyway, deposits are refundable within 30 days.

The Moon is still there, and it’s not going anywhere.