Startup Named After “Despicable Me” Villain GRU Reveals Plans to Open Hotel on the Moon by 2032
- - Startup Named After “Despicable Me” Villain GRU Reveals Plans to Open Hotel on the Moon by 2032
Colson ThayerJanuary 27, 2026 at 2:15 AM
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Concept art for GRU Space's hotel on the moon
Skyler Chan/YouTube
A San Fransisco startup has announced plans to open a hotel on the moon by 2032
The announcement follows President Donald Trump's “Ensuring American Space Superiority" executive order urging NASA to build a lunar structure by 2030
The company is named after Despicable Me villain Gru, who is obsessed with stealing the moon
They may not be stealing the moon, but a new startup is planning to build on it.
On Jan. 12, San Francisco-based company Galactic Resource Utilization Space, Inc., otherwise known as GRU Space, announced its plans to build a hotel on the moon by 2032. It’s even asking potential customers to put down a $1 million deposit to stay at the future lunar structure.
According to the company’s whitepaper, GRU Space estimates a first iteration of the hotel will cost guests $416,667 per person, per night.
https://t.co/ZfO77Nc1BT pic.twitter.com/FVBZqwycak
— GRU Space (YC W26) (@gru_space) January 21, 2026
Featured throughout GRU Space’s social media content are clips from Illumination’s Despicable Me franchise. In the first film, Gru — the main villain voiced by Steve Carell — attempts to steal the moon by using a shrink ray.
Gru (STEVE CARELL) tells his minions about their new mission to steal the moon in Despicable Me
Universal Pictures
University of California, Berkeley graduate Skyler Chan is leading the project as the founder of GRU Space. According to his post on Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, Chan has always wanted to fly to space since he was 3 years old. But as he’s grown up, he’s found it “more meaningful” to enable even more people to go to space, not just himself.
To start the project, GRU Space plans to build an inflatable version of the hotel on Earth and land it on the moon’s surface in 2029. Once deployed, the structure will “use compressed gas to inflate a small-scale version of the v1 hotels,” the company says. This model is said to have enough room for four guests to "comfortably stay for several days.”
The company hopes to land and deploy the first hotel by 2032. GRU Space plans to include a full "Environmental Control and Life Support System,” which features carbon dioxide removal, oxygen generation, water reclamation and thermal control.
This first version of the hotel's goal to last on the lunar surface for a minimum of 10 years before a major repair or replacement is needed.
Subsequent proposed missions would focus on implementing the company’s in-situ resource utilization technology, which would collect, process and use local material found on the moon to produce essential supplies like building materials. They hope to use robotic technology to create the v2 hotel, currently taking design inspiration from the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.
But GRU Space’s ambitions don’t end there. If they find success on the lunar surface, the company hopes to ultimately build the “first cities on Mars.”
Chan, the company’s founder, did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
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Apollo 11 Moon Landing
Nasa/Getty
The announcement of a moon hotel comes as U.S. government officials have made their own call for a return to space exploration.
On Dec. 18, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled, “Ensuring American Space Superiority.” The action ordered Americans to return to the moon by 2028 through NASA’s Artemis Program. Trump also ordered the establishment of “initial elements of a permanent lunar outpost by 2030.”
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
