Some Of The Luxurious Super-Yachts Owned By Tech Billionaires

There is a great number of things that we could think about when it comes to the billionaire’s life, from real estates, supercars, to private airplanes, e.t.c. These are just a few of the examples of what a deep pocket could buy you. Some, like tech billionaires Bill Gates and Elon Musk, has a private jet that could take them to anywhere they want on Earth.

Some others spend their money on luxurious yachts, making all seven seas their kingdoms.

Yachts aren’t a popular vehicle for tech billionaires or entrepreneurs to have. It is easy to justify for a private jet: business trips can be made at a fraction of the time that it takes for them to stand in a line at the airport’s terminal. But a yacht, however, entirely plays and zero work at all for the most part.

This can be seen in the design of the yachts of the billionaires that do have them. Google’s founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s yachts are filled with amenities like personal movie theatres, gyms, spas, pools, e.t.c.

If you have money to spare, you can discover what life’s like on one of these hyper-luxurious yachts by renting them out for a few nights. You can actually ask Sergey Brin and rent from him his yacht, which, in the past had cost customers some $773,000 per week.

Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison may not be a familiar name to most, but he’s the founder to the company most of us use products often: Oracle. Java is a very familiar name to those who are good at computers.

Ellison owns a 288-foot yacht named Musashi, though Musashi is not the first boat that Ellison ever bought. A bigger 454-foot yacht was previously in Larrison’s ownership. Explicitly designed to Ellison’s specifications, the Rising Sun has 82 rooms, a movie theatre, a wine cellar, and a basketball court onboard. It was eventually sold to David Geffen for $300 million.

Interestingly, the Musashi is a sister ship to another yacht owned by Sears CEO Eddie Lampert. The Fountainhead as it is known is often mistaken to belong to the infamous investor Mark Cuban. "The guy who owns the boat tells everyone that it's mine,” Cuban said during an interview. "It’s so crazy ... I don’t even own a boat."

Steve Jobs

It was Ellison’s purchase of the Rising Sun that drove Steve Jobs - the late CEO of Apple - to get himself one. Unfortunately, Jobs never set foot on the boat as before it was completed in 2012; Jobs had died of pancreatic cancer the previous year.

After Jobs’ death in 2011, the yacht along with the fortune he amassed by creating Apple that is worth $14.1 billion was inherited by his wife and now a widow, Laurene Powell Jobs. The 256-foot yacht - Venus - is worth $130 million.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin

The two Google co-founders are among the wealthiest people in the world. After all, Google is more or less the company that represents the Internet. They are respectively the 10th and 14th richest in the world according to estimations. The pair is known to not at all shy away from splurging, owning vast real estates, each with a superyacht in their private docks, and private jets as well.

First, Larry Page owned the yacht Senses. The boat is 194-foot long, and its total valuation is $45 million. He bought the boat off of the hands of a New Zealand businessman in 2011. Aside from a dedicated helicopter pad, the boat’s also equipped with a private beach club, Jacuzzi, and dining areas both indoor and outdoor.

Sergey Brin poured a bigger fortune over his own yacht than his friend. The 240-foot long yacht named Dragonfly was bought for $80 million in 2011. Sporting amenities like open-air cinema and even a dance floor, the Dragonfly is fully equipped to give Brin the finest of treatment on the weekends. It is also said to be the fastest superyacht in the world.

Eric Schmidt

Larry and Sergey aren’t the sole pair in Google to own a yacht. The former chairman of Google Eric Schmidt also has one of his own. The 194-foot yacht he named Oasis was bought for $72.3 million in 2009. Oasis has a swimming pool as well as a gym repurposed into a nightclub.

Niklas Zennstrom

Niklas Zennstrom is one of the founders of Skype, and though his passion for yachts is there, it is geared further toward being sporty in competitive sailing competitions rather than wild nights on the water. Zennstrom has owned a series of boats, all of which named Ran. The latest that was added to his collection was the seventh in the series.

The Ran VII is one of the most technologically advanced in Zennstrom’s ownership yet. The boat uses electric, which he said would make it: "lighter, less drag, quieter, and most importantly it is environmentally friendly.”

Ran VII will compete in regattas with a racing team owned and managed by him and his wife, Catherine. The team was launched in 2008 and had had many regattas medals under its belt.

Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg

The chairman of IAC digital media company Barry Diller co-owns a $70 million yacht with his wife, the fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg. The sailing yacht that they collaboratively own is 350 feet in length and has six bedrooms. Eos - as it is known has hosted many celebrities over the year, including Karlie Kloss, Bradley Cooper, and even Harry Styles.

Jim Clark

Netscape for most people isn’t a name that strikes any bells. Nonetheless, its owner Jim Clark has owned a multitude of yachts over 30 years and in 2012, put two of his sailing yachts on sale. The two boats’ valuation reaches as high as $113 million in combination. The first boat, Hanuman, is 136-foot long and is listed for $18 million. The other larger yacht named Athena, a 295-foot yacht, which is branded with a hefty $95 million price tag.

Previously, Clark owned a 155-foot yacht named Hyperion. His current stead on water is a racing yacht he named Comanche.

Charles Simonyi

Charles Simonyi was one of the masterminds behind the wildly popular Microsoft Office suite. A few years before he left the company, Simonyi decided to splurge on a yacht. The thing he told the designer in 1999 who crafted the crude drawing of his boat was to make it so that it would be: "home away from [his] home in Seattle."

This resulted in Skat - ‘Treasure’ in Danish. The yacht is 233 feet long, and it is designed with an untraditional design and a unique grey painting that’s a reminiscence of a warship rather than a luxury yacht. It has a matching helicopter, a gym, as well as a collection of motorcycles.

Richard Branson

Last on the list is the British billionaire Richard Branson. He previously owned a yacht until he sold it off in September 2018 for $3 million. The catamaran that he sold was listed at a price that’s significantly lower than the number he asked for in 2014: $9.6 million.

The catamaran was bought in 2009 and was named ‘Necker Belle’ after Branson’s private island in the Caribbean, Necker Island.