Yacht Brinkmanship: Owners of Tech’s Biggest Pleasure Craft Compete to the Ends of the Earth
For some, a superyacht isn’t enough—you also need submersibles, remotely operated vehicles, a Starlink or two, and a support vessel with a landing pad and extra crew.
If you’re Sergey Brin, Evan Spiegel, Jan Koum, Jeff Bezos, Laurene Powell Jobs, Eric Schmidt, Yuri Milner or any one of dozens of other modern-day tech moguls, it’s not enough to just own a yacht. Now you might need two—one for you and your guests to ride on, and one to act as a “support vessel,” tailing you around the seven seas while towing submersibles, seaplanes, helicopters or just some extra deckhands.
It’s the maritime version of keeping up with the Joneses. When it comes to accumulating pleasure craft, tech’s billionaire elite are sparing no expense—and that includes on submarines, the newest must-have add-on to the luxury superyacht, Titanic disasters be damned. Executives seem to bring the same cutthroat ambition to yachting that they do to business, sizing up each other’s yacht lengths, hiring the same small cadre of designers and tradespeople, and filling them with the same toys and tech.
“If you’re a billionaire, you want to have the nicest things because you can,” said superyacht designer Jonathan Quinn Barnett. “I think it’s actually a pleasure to know that if there’s anything out there, you own the finest.”
Figureheads and Wayfinders
When Jeff Bezos’ megayacht, Koru, set sail earlier this summer, observers noted that the 417-foot vessel’s figurehead bore a distinct resemblance to Lauren Sánchez, his fiancée. What they didn’t know was that Bezos was likely inspired by IAC chair Barry Diller, whose 305-foot sailing yacht, Eos, features a 9-foot figurehead of Diller’s wife, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg. Bezos reportedly spent his final days as Amazon CEO on Eos.
When von Furstenberg commissioned artist and actor Anh Duong to sculpt Eos’ figurehead, Duong suggested using her patron as the model. The six-month commission included one note from the famously opinionated Diller: “He was concerned that she looked too serious,” Duong recalled. With a little tweak, the figurehead was complete.
Those who work in the yacht industry have become accostumed to tech moguls’ desires to one-up their peers with the latest creature comforts and state-of-the-art technology. “There is a greater desire to go and explore, rather than go and be on the back of a boat in St-Tropez or any of the regular yachting destinations,” said Crispin Baynes, a yacht broker at Burgess Yachts. He said popular destinations for seaborne moguls include the Northwest Passage and the South Pacific, where Google founder Brin’s 240-foot yacht Dragonfly reportedly delivered resources to Vanuatu after a cyclone hit the island in 2015.
Brin owns two other luxury boats, whose names also end with the suffix “fly”—Butterfly and Firefly. Mike Gregory, who captained Dragonfly during its 2015 humanitarian mission, has described the fleet as “delivering the highest standards of ‘off-the-beaten-track yacht exploration.’”
Submersibles, ROVs and Starlinks
Big tech’s knack for producing adrenaline junkies bodes well for submarine builders like Charles Kohnen of Seamagine Hydrospace. The late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen splurged for an onboard submersible on Octopus, his 417-foot megayacht. Kohnen, whose company has built about eight submersibles for yachts, said owners often use submersibles to find shipwrecks or explore sea life, such as pelagic fish that occupy the water column 200 meters beneath the surface.
Barnett, who designed the interiors of Octopus, said many tech clients also buy remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, which trawl underwater and send high-definition live broadcasts back to the mother ship. “You can sit in the comfort of a theater of your yacht and explore the bottom of the ocean,” said Barnett, whose nontech clients include film director Francis Ford Coppola. “It’s an amazing experience to see some of these things for the very first time.”
Another popular choice is projection mapping, which displays images on a yacht’s ceiling. “We’re basically transforming the interior space into something completely different,” Barnett told me. He said possible projections include a forest of trees, the night sky and videogames.
Starlink—Elon Musk’s satellite internet provider, owned by SpaceX—has proven revolutionary for the yachting industry. Many owners previously installed humongous domes atop their ships for delivering speedy internet connections far out at sea. Today, Starlink’s 2-foot-wide dish has rendered the domes (which provide cover for satellite antennas) obsolete. “Thank you to the Starlink team yet again coming to the rescue,” said Social Capital founder Chamath Palihapitya, as he beamed in from sea on a recent “All-In” podcast.
Support Vessels and Sea Chalets
Owners like Bezos and WhatsApp co-founder Koum reportedly pony up millions to add a support vessel, which trails the yacht and can carry helicopters, submarines, seaplanes and extra crew. “It’s a very new typology of boat,” said Kirsten Schwalgien, the designer behind Nebula, a 223-foot support vessel reportedly owned by Koum. (Schwalgien declined to confirm the identity of the vessel’s owner.)
Schwalgien said support vessels have risen in popularity over the last 15 years. “The owner looks at his shadow maybe more than his own yacht,” she said, referring to the support vessel. Many of these support ships include helipads so unwanted noise and wind don’t disturb the mother ship (Nebula includes both a helipad and a full-size hangar). Bezos’ bride-to-be, Sánchez—a licensed helicopter pilot—was recently photographed landing a chopper on Koru’s support vessel Abeona.
Many in the tech industry hire the same designers to craft their yacht’s interiors. French designer Rémi Tessier is reportedly responsible for the yachts owned by Koum, Snap CEO Spiegel and GoPro CEO Nick Woodman. Tessier declined an interview request.
Before signing up for services like Tessier’s, yacht owners often test the waters by chartering. “It’s like a ski chalet. You start renting it, decide you like it, and you get a bit more experience with it,” said yacht broker Baynes. Some never end up parting ways with the tens of millions required to buy a secondhand yacht or the upward of hundreds of millions for a custom one. “Chartering is like staying in a hotel,” Barnett said. He remembers George Lucas telling him, “I’m a renter. I rent and I give it back and then someone else has to take care of it.”
After all, sleeping in one’s own floating bed comes at a steep price. Former Google CEO Schmidt reportedly plunked down nearly $68 million for a 16-year-old, 267-foot superyacht—a tad cheaper than the rumored $500 million Bezos spent on his custom yacht. The yearly upkeep, including fuel and crew, is generally about 10% of the vessel’s value, according to Barnett.
String Instruments and Spacecraft
It’s just as important to add the owner’s personal imprint to the project, whether that comprises their hobbies or their collections. On Octopus, that meant incorporating Allen’s vast art collection, as well as the Microsoft co-founder’s love of music. Across the eight guest decks, Barnett opened up each level at the main stairwell to create two side-by-side long-string instruments, featuring half-inch–diameter braided stainless-steel strings. “You can walk up on any deck to one of these guitars,” Barnett said of the novelty, which is powered by Pro Tools audio software. “You can make either of the guitars sound like the bells of St. Mary’s or Jimi Hendrix just by changing the control.”
As tech billionaires dream of conquering space, Barnett sees megayachts as a more feasible goal. “It’s the closest one could get to building a spaceship in our modern world and traveling to places you could never go,” he said. “People may talk about going to Mars, but in this lifetime—in my lifetime—the best I can do is build you a yacht.”