- Mark Zuckerberg’s new yacht, the Launchpad, is making its debut this summer.
- The mega yacht recently called at Mallorca before continuing its voyage further into the Mediterranean.
- It looks like Zuckerberg may be on his way to overtake Jeff Bezos as the king of superyachts this year.
Move over, Jeff Bezos. Mark Zuckerberg is this summer’s Poseiden.
While the Amazon founder made waves last year with the debut of his mega-yacht, Koru, it’s Zuckerberg’s name that’s making waves in the yachting world this season.
In March, rumors began to surface that Meta’s CEO had purchased Launchpad, a Dutch-built, 118-meter motor yacht originally built for a Russian oligarch.
By May, with the yacht and Zuckerberg heading to Panama to celebrate his 40th birthday, including taking a few spins on the infamous hydrofoil, the deal seemed all but sealed.
Now that summer has arrived, Zuckerberg has debuted Launchpad and her supporting superyacht, Wingman, on yachting’s biggest stage: the Mediterranean.
Zuckerberg took his family on a trip aboard the Launchpad off the coast of Mallorca this month. They wore matching T-shirts to celebrate Father’s Day and his father’s 70th birthday, he wrote in an Instagram caption. Local media spotted Zuckerberg, his wife Priscilla Chan, and their three daughters on the Spanish island and aboard a yacht equipped with water slides and other attractions.
From there the yacht sailed to the Ligurian Sea, a sandbar in the Mediterranean Sea between the Italian Riviera and the island of Corsica.
The yacht will continue to crisscross the Mediterranean this summer, and as Zuckerberg continues to post photos from his voyage, we may learn more about how he customized the yacht to suit his personal tastes.
For now, little is known about the yacht other than that it was built by Feadship, the same shipyard that built Larry Ellison’s Musashi. Photos from Superyacht Times show that the launchpad features a large pool and a helipad. The final purchase price was not disclosed, but a new yacht of this size would likely require a nine-figure upfront cost and millions of dollars per year in maintenance costs.
Perhaps, like Bezos did last year, Zuckerberg will host some of the biggest names in entertainment and business. (Bezos and his fiancée, Lauren Sanchez, threw an engagement party on the Koru last year, with guests including Bill Gates and Leonardo DiCaprio. On Friday, Bezos and Sanchez were spotted riding a wave runner in the Aegean Sea with Kim Kardashian near the 400-foot yacht.) Or Zuckerberg might prefer the privacy that is most important to many in the superyacht world.
Whether Zuckerberg emerges this summer as a hedonist or a family man, Launchpad fits well into one of the most successful brand rebrands by a CEO in recent memory, shifting him from being a robotic, untrustworthy tech nerd to being something of a friendly, fun, wholesome tech bro.
He now owns one of the world’s largest yachts, which adds to his coolness (although unfortunately for Zuckerberg, it’s 30 feet shorter than Koru).
