10 things in tech you need to know today

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1. Google cofounder Sergey Brin has been building a secretive airship company called LTA for over four years. The airship will be climate-friendly and deliver humanitarian aid worldwide. Here’s what we know so far.

2. NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter was scheduled to attempt to fly again following a series of delays. Ingenuity was due to take off at 3:30am ET, but we won’t know anything until 6:15am ET, a few minutes before the flight data is expected to reach the Space Flight Operations Facility. NASA plans to start a livestream at that time.

3. Legendary investor Ron Conway says Coinbase is the new Google. Conway, the “Godfather of Silicon Valley,” told Insider that Coinbase is opening up crypto – much like Google did for the web. Here’s what that means for the next wave of startup founders.

4. NASA has picked SpaceX’s Starship to land its next astronauts on the moon. Elon Musk’s aerospace company beat out Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin for the contract, which aims to put boots on the moon by 2024. See their plans to put astronauts on the moon.

5. A college grad emailed Coinbase his thesis on bitcoin – and became the company’s first employee. Olaf Carlson-Wee cold-emailed the founders his 90-page thesis, and was offered an interview within five minutes. Here’s how he landed a job at the country’s largest bitcoin exchange.

6. Massachusetts is escalating its months-long battle against trading-app Robinhood. The state’s regulators are seeking to revoke Robinhood’s broker license, preventing its use in the state – just as the app aims to go public. Why Massachusetts claims the app violates state laws.

7. Apple Music will pay artists a penny per stream – double what Spotify pays. In a letter to artists, the company said it will start paying them more, while Spotify pays less than a cent for every song streamed. More on the movement to increase artists’ pay.

8. Elon Musk drove a Cybertruck prototype to the automaker’s Gigafactory in Texas. The site will be the home of Tesla’s Cybertruck production. See photos of the prototype at the plant.

9. Microsoft is on a shopping spree. It recently bought health-AI company Nuance, and is said to be in exclusive talks to acquire Discord. These are the 22 companies Microsoft is most likely to acquire next.

10. We identified the 142 most powerful people at Google Cloud as it races to beat Amazon and Microsoft. Google sees cloud as an increasingly important revenue engine for the company – and is investing heavily in its growth. Here’s our exclusive org chart.

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Compiled by Jordan Erb. Tips/comments? Email jerb@insider.com or tweet @JordanParkerErb.

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