The Five Superyachts of the Tech Bros

Mark Zuckerberg — Launchpad
Eric Schmidt — Whisper
Jeff Bezos — Koru
Larry Ellison — Musashi
Sergey Brin — Dragonfly

In his excellent recent book ‘The Haves and the Have Yachts’, Evan Osnos describes how the superyacht is “the most expensive item that our species has ever figured out how to own.” Which means we’ve finally completed capitalism, and way before any of those other supposedly intelligent species like the elephants or the dolphins or the blue whales, who rarely bother coming to Porto Cervo anyway. The FT, meanwhile, once described running a superyacht as “like owning a stack of 10 Van Goghs — only you are holding them over your head as you tread water, trying to keep them dry.” But who wants some Van Goghs anyway? Isn’t he only famous for cutting off an ear? That happens all the time in international waters, and you just have to pay the performer a bit more and make sure everyone deletes the videos afterwards.

If anyone’s going to find a solution to the intractable challenges of modern superyacht ownership, however, it’s got to be the galaxy-brained tech billionaires, who have already solved humanity’s other massive problems, like ‘not being able to get regular personal updates from your prep school geography teacher’ and ‘struggling to get a new charging cable delivered within an hour in rural Surrey.’ Here, in celebration of this trailblazing allocation of capital, are the five most notable superyachts of the tech bros.

1. Mark Zuckerberg — Launchpad

Launchpad was the largest ‘gigayacht’ (any boat over 295 feet in length) ever built in the Netherlands when it was sold to Mark Zuckerberg in 2024. But the Meta founder got it at the bargain price of $300 million because it was originally made for Russian “nickel king” Vladimir Potanin, who suddenly found himself unable to take possession of it after Europe banned yacht exports to Russia, yadda yadda yadda. So not all bad, this war in Ukraine stuff. Launchpad sleeps 24 guests with 48 crew members, and features a helipad, cinema, spa, gym, and swimming pool. It also comes with a 67-metre companion vessel called Wingman that carries a vast array of equipment and nautical toys. Fun fact: the boat was originally called ‘The Launchpad’, but they dropped the ‘the’ after Justin Timberlake bought everyone martinis or something.

2. Eric Schmidt — Whisper

Google founder Schmidt’s boat is called ‘Whisper’, because there’s nothing quieter than 312 feet of prime gigayacht looming towards your dockside vongole. Built by Lürssen in 2014, it was purchased by Schmidt in 2023, and sleeps around 16 people with a crew of 28. Whisper features a fully-equipped gym, a large mosaic pool, and two rather nifty retractable ‘sea terraces’ — as well as a ‘night club’ which could well compete, if the imagery is to be believed, with some of the finest in Reading.

3. Jeff Bezos — Koru

The Amazon boss’s Koru is named after the Māori symbol meaning “new beginnings,” — which is precisely what the roughly 30,000 people fired by the company since October will presumably now be able to look forward to. (Maybe they’ll finally have more time to spend on their boats?) The sailing yacht, which sits at 417ft in length, was so big when it was completed in 2023 that Bezos nearly had a central bridge in Rotterdam dismantled so he could get it out onto the open seas — until the people of the city decided this particular metaphor was a little too on-the-nose. Koru travels with a 75-metre support ship called Abeona which itself carries a helicopter and several other boats, each of which presumably has their own support craft, and so on and so forth, which I think is what people mean when they talk about trickle-down economics.

4. Larry Ellison — Musashi

Oracle founder Ellison’s previous yacht was called Izanami — the name of the Japanese shinto goddess of creation and death. Unfortunately, it also spelled “I’m A Nazi” backwards. So now Ellison has Musashi, a much larger (and less nominally problematic) craft, which sits at a glistening 288 feet and features an outdoor basketball court on its vast deck. Musashi can travel 6,000 nautical miles without refuelling, and boasts a special ‘glass elevator’ — the same one, presumably, that Larry used to teleport his son, Kendall (sorry, David) Ellison miraculously to the very top of Paramount.

5. Sergey Brin — Dragonfly

Google co-founder Brin’s Dragonfly is the biggest of the bunch at a gargantuan 465 feet, and is noted for its rugged, angular ‘battleship-style’ design. The yacht was originally commissioned for billionaire Leonid Mikhelson of Russian gas conglomerate Novatek — also a great restaurant in Mayfair, I think — before ownership transferred in 2024 to Brin. A notable glass-bottomed pool forms the centre of the entertaining space on the vessel, while a custom double-folding platform system at the stern can be retracted to create a “beach-style” area with direct access to the water. A bit like, you know, a beach.

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