Billionaire Yacht Tier List 🚢💰

From billion-dollar megayachts to the fastest speedboats on the planet to life-ending disasters, this is the billionaire yacht tier list. Bill Gates bought a 600 million dollar hydrogen-powered eco-friendly superyacht. F-tier. Mark Zuckerberg bought a 300 million dollar megayacht named Launchpad for his 40th birthday. But the four-story, 387-foot boat with a 50-person crew wasn't enough for Zuck. So he bought a 30 million dollar superyacht named Wingman just to carry around his toys. Maintenance and crew salaries for the ships add up to 30 million a year. But that's no concern for the Zuck since he makes that in three hours. Mark Zuckerberg is my dream man. Despite only making 120 grand a year, Vladimir Putin has been linked to a variety of yachts. One of them being the 270-foot Graceful, which has ultra-luxury cabins, $34,000 designer beds, marble bathrooms with gold-plated fixtures, and a swimming pool that transforms into a dance floor. But in February 2022, in the middle of a repair, the yacht abruptly left a German shipyard at night. The reason for the bizarre escape was given two weeks later, when Putin invaded Ukraine and retaliatory sanctions were placed on Russian assets. We're joining with European allies to find and seize their yachts. We're coming for you, ill-begotten gains. While Graceful managed to duck seizure, Putin's 700 million dollar yacht wasn't so lucky. Talking about ill-begotten gains with Nancy Pelosi right behind you is crazy work. I'd say Putin gets a B-tier. In 2004, Diddy was partying on his 6.3 million dollar yacht when it was raided by police. According to a party attender, Puffy just freaked. He's always worried that people are out to get him because of his fame, so he just ran for it. But it turned out the raid was an accident. The police had mistook the boat guests for a crew of thugs, and when they realized their mistake, they were most apologetic. Why they didn't find it suspicious that Diddy turned into Usain Bolt the second they showed up, I guess we'll never know. But it was a very costly oversight. As Diddy's empire expanded, his yachts got better and better. By 2022, he was a billionaire, allowing him to charter the 1 million dollar per week superyacht named Victorious. And in December of 2022, Diddy made the most of this family-friendly yacht by bringing his 24-year-old son on board, which turned out to be a terrible mistake. According to a lawsuit filed by a former stewardess, Diddy had the yacht swarming with celebrities and delirious women, some of which had passed out on the floor after a few shots of Diddy juice. And it was in the ship's movie theater where the stewardess alleges she was diddled by Diddy's son. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel bought a 200 million dollar yacht when he was in his early 20s that he rides around with his supermodel wife. I pray that he hits an iceberg. In 1988, Donald Trump spent 30 million dollars on a superyacht originally owned by a Saudi arms dealer and renamed it to the Trump Princess. The yacht is covered in gold and onyx and features an outdoor pool protected by bulletproof glass. And in case you still somehow get crookscoped, it's got an onboard hospital. But the Trump Princess wasn't cutting it for the Donald. So in the early 90s, he began working on the Trump Princess 2, which would have been the biggest yacht ever made. But after running into financial difficulties, he abandoned both of his ships, calling off the Princess 2 and selling the Princess 1 to a Saudi prince. Despite no longer being a member, Trump still gets love from the yachting community thanks to tax breaks. For helping out everyday superyacht owners, Trump gets an A-tier. Queen Elizabeth's yacht was cursed. I name this ship Britannia. I wish success to Salem. When Britannia was unleashed in 1953, Britain was still facing post-war rationing. So as a symbol of frugality, the Queen broke a bottle of cheap wine rather than champagne on the hull of her 100 million dollar giga yacht. The 412-foot castle featured a garage for storing the Queen's whips, a water slide, and a massive dining table that apparently gave the Queen a secret button that signaled for the food to be cleared in case her guests got too boring. Apart from world tours, the boat was infamously used for royal honeymoons, all four of which resulted in divorce. Maybe the Britannia was cursed. Maybe taking your bride onto a floating island with 240 prime-aged men is a mistake. But after going 0 for 4, the royal family landlocked all future honeymoons, and divorce rates have plummeted. In 1997, the Britannia was decommissioned, and it was one of the only times the Queen cried in public. Britannia's got some decent lore, but it doesn't have one and only God-tier status. In 2015, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman threw a massive party on a private island, where him and a few dozen of his Saudi boys flew out 150 women, STD-tested all of them, took away their phones, and then had one massive prayer session. But after local news got word of his haramathon, the Crown Prince realized he needed more privacy. So one day while vacationing in France, he saw a massive boat anchored on the coast that would serve his needs. And in the most expensive impulse buy of all time, he dropped half a billion dollars on the Serene. This 7-story, 439-foot giga-yacht has 3 swimming pools, an underwater viewing room, a snow room with real snow, a 5-person submarine, 2 helipads, and multiple gourmet kitchens. The Prince's lavish spending was called out for being hypocritical, as he was cutting salaries at the same time. But bin Salman wasn't the only controversial figure to use a Serene. The previous owner was a vodka billionaire, and to help offset the 40 million-a-year running costs, he offered the boat for charter. One of his guests, who paid 5 mil for a one-week vacation, was professional climate activist Bill Gates. Bin Salman is an A-tier baller. In 1998, during an Australian yacht race, tech billionaire Larry Ellison drove his racing yacht named Sayonara into the eye of a hurricane. The race ended in 6 deaths, but through sheer luck, Larry and his team managed to escape with only a few broken bones and took home first place. Larry's one key takeaway from this brush with death was that his boat wasn't fast enough. His next racing yacht had a 20-story high carbon fiber wing, and with him at the helm, Team USA won the America's Cup for the first time in 15 years. But for his leisure time, Larry goes for ultra-luxury yachts like the Ronin, the Katana, the Rising Sun, and the Musashi, all of which were named and designed after the way of the samurai, which Larry has an obsession with. You're not a weeaboo, you're just poor. Larry is the quintessential billionaire sidequester. The $300 million Motor Yacht A and $600 million Sailing Yacht A are two of the most striking boats ever built, but there's one problem. Their owner is Russian. Luckily for Andrei Malnichenko, Motor Yacht A was in safe waters when the sanctions kicked in, but Sailing Yacht A was caught lacking in an Italian port, and here's the crazy part. According to Italian law, frozen assets must be returned to their owners in the same condition they were at the time of freezing. So thanks to staff salaries, insurance, and upkeep, the Italian government has been running up $1 million a month for this single boat to sit and do nothing. Once the sanctions get lifted, Italy might be able to send the bill to Andrei, but based on how things are going, that might take a little while. Free Sailing Yacht A. In 2009, Steve Jobs began working with the designer on a $120 million super yacht, but he had a problem. At the time, he was facing a battle with cancer, and after years of work on the yacht, Jobs told his biographer, I know that it's possible I will die and leave my wife with a half-built boat, but I have to keep going on it. If I don't, it's an admission that I'm about to die. In the end, Steve was half-correct. He did die, but he left his wife Laureen with a fully built boat. One year after Steve's death, Venus was unveiled. The one-of-a-kind vessel resembles an Apple product, being an overpriced hunk of beautiful minimalism, complete with a charging port. It features floor-to-ceiling glass made by the engineers behind legendary Apple monuments, and it runs on 27-inch iMacs, which someone must have forgotten to update. Gaius Caesar Augustus Manicus, also known as Caligula, was the third emperor of Rome, and he was a turbo freak. But one of the freakiest things he did was build two gigantic 230-foot yachts that he put in the Nemi Lake. The surprisingly advanced ships were covered in gold, jewels, and statues, as well as vines and fruit trees. They were known as Emperor Caligula's Pleasure Ships, and I'm sure that in 37 AD, there weren't any parties like Caligula parties. History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. In August of 2024, tech billionaire Mike Lynch, aka the British Bill Gates, was celebrating a miraculous legal victory, where he had avoided a 99.3% chance of life in prison. Departed to his new life, he had invited his friends and family on his massive superyacht named Bayesian. Upon construction, its 237-foot mast was the tallest in the world, only beaten years later by another bald tech billionaire. In the early morning of August 19th, the Bayesian was anchored less than a mile away from shore in Sicily with Mike and his gang on board, when an extreme storm hit the area. The Bayesian was anchored at the perfectly wrong spot. After getting hit by a downburst as strong as a tornado, the boat lost power. Within a few minutes, it had flipped on its side and sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean. The exact reasons for this which experts describe as one in a million, are uncertain. In an effort to win mast measuring contests, the Bayesian may have been destabilized from a top-heavy design. Its keel was also retracted when it sank, which would have reduced stability. But the CEO of the company that built the yacht disagrees, saying that the ship was an unsinkable ship. Calling any ship unsinkable is insane, especially after it already sank. He blames the crash on failures of the 10-man crew, claiming the boat would have been fine had certain precautions been taken. But regardless of the cause, seven of the yacht's passengers lost their lives, including Mike and his daughter. Four of the victims had no water in their lungs, implying they had run out of oxygen in air pockets after the boat had sunk. This was what we thought Oceangate was. F-tier for safety concerns, film producer David Geffen spent $500 million on The Rising Sun. The 454-foot luxury yacht was known for housing Geffen's high-profile guests, including presidents, celebrities, tech billionaires, singers, and even professional climate activists. But David's yacht would get him into hot water during the middle of the pandemic. In a now-deleted Instagram post, he shared a picture of his superyacht, saying that he was isolating on it in the Grenadines and hoping all of us poors are staying safe. That's probably the hardest flex of all time. The Lamborghini 63 is the only yacht that comes equipped with seatbelts, thanks to its top speed of 63 knots, which is 20 knots faster than the Coast Guard. Its cockpit is ripped straight from a normal Lambo, including its fighter jet start buttons that control its twin V12 engines with 2,000 horsepower each. The first person to get their hands on the $4 million supercar of the sea was UFC champion Conor McGregor. It makes sense to me that the fastest and flashiest yacht on the Conor's not a billionaire. I just really like the Lambo. In 1881, J.P. Morgan bought a 185-foot yacht named Corsair. But nine years later, he needed something better to flex on his rich friends in the New York Yacht Club. So he built the 241-foot Corsair II. But a few years later, after giving it to the military, he got the 304-foot Corsair III. When it was launched in 1898, a journalist asked J.P. how much it would cost to operate such a massive yacht. The King of Banking's reply would become one of the most famous lines in history. Sir, if you have to ask that question, you can't afford it. I wonder how much it would cost to operate such a massive yacht. Walmart monarch Nancy Walton's $300 million superyacht can't catch a break. In 2023, protesters in Ibiza sprayed it with paint-filled fire extinguishers, then held up a banner saying you consume, others suffer. A few months later, another activist group blasted the yacht again in Barcelona. The protesters were calling out the waste of the ultra-wealthy, and the fact that the same billionaires preaching sustainability are the ones most responsible for deep-frying the planet, thanks in part to their leisure activities. After both vandalizations, members of the yacht's crew cleaned off the paint. Nancy Walton probably went back to her travels without even noticing. The protesters probably went back to Walmart to stock up on more paint. And the cycle of capitalism continued. Valve co-founder Gabe Newell spends most of his time at sea on his army of yachts. During the pandemic, he had his 220-foot support vessel named Dapple follow him around as a floating hospital. After COVID died down, he sold that boat to Zuck, and now daily drives the 300-foot Tranquility, which was originally owned by legendary fraudster Jolo. But Gabe might have no use for the massive luxury boat once he gets done building his even more massive Project Y722. For exploring, he has a research vessel named Pressure Drop. But for more extreme adventures, his ocean exploration company Inkfish has a submarine that's been to the very bottom of the Mariana Trench. On their first descent, they mainly just found plastic. But if Gabe keeps on going, who knows what he'll discover. Gabe's just living that peak gamer life. Elon Musk has bad luck with vacations. In 2000, when he was the CEO of X.com, he took his first ever break from work to go on a honeymoon with his then-wife. But during the plane ride, Elon got ousted as CEO by X.com's board. On his second attempt at a honeymoon a few months later, he almost died of malaria. The next time he took a week off, his friend's rocket exploded. The time after that, it was Elon's rocket that blew up. According to Musk, the lesson here is, don't take a week off. Keeping with that spirit, Elon doesn't own any yachts. And he's very proud about this. When Zuck copped his yacht, Elon said it looked cool, but he made sure to clarify that his work doesn't allow time for a yacht. He then took some potshots at Jeff Bezos, telling him to get out of his hot tub and yacht so he could actually make it to space. In a world where the ultra-rich flex on each other with bigger and bigger yachts, having no yacht just might be the biggest flex of all. Elon Musk is a professional perception manager. In July of 2021, a freshly divorced Jeff Bezos spent his final days as Amazon's CEO on his friend Barry Diller's yacht. The $200 million boat is one of the tallest sailing yachts ever made, complete with a hood ornament of Barry's wife. A few years later, Jeff took delivery of his $500 million boat, which is the tallest sailing yacht ever made, complete with a hood ornament of not his wife. When asked if the figurehead was carved in her image, Lauren Sanchez said, I'm very flattered, but it's not. If it was me, it would need bigger breasts. Zuck would definitely agree. Jeff named his boat Coru, a Maori word for new beginnings. But his floating midlife crisis ran into problems before he even stepped on board. In 2022, Rotterdam announced they would be dismantling a historic bridge to allow Jeff's boat to pass through. But after thousands of outraged locals agreed to throw eggs at the superyacht, the plans were called off and Coru was quietly towed below the bridge with its mast detached. But criticism still follows Coru and its $100 million support vessel everywhere they go. For God's sake, tax the rich. This guy doesn't know what to do with his money. The amount of capital accumulation at the very, very top is unrivaled in global history. While his employees are literally found dead, he's going to spend $500 million on a stupid mega yacht. Jeff has never officially responded to the haters, but if he did, he would probably just say two words. Thank you. Because you guys paid for all of this.