who bought steve jobs yacht

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Fact file: six things you didn't know about Steve Jobs' superyacht Venus

From her subversive use of glass to her boxy profile, Venus is one of the most recognisable yachts on the water. BOAT takes a look behind her razor-sharp lines...

"Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. Apple has been very fortunate to introduce a few of these to the world." So said Steve Jobs on the day the iPhone was first introduced at Macworld 2007. In his speech, he goes on to mention the Macintosh, the iPod and (of course) the iPhone. But he would soon have a hand in another innovation – his 78.2-metre superyacht Venus .

Construction began in 2009, with the   Feadship superyacht delivered three years later to international acclaim. While her owner's involvement might have something to do with it, Venus ' design was also unlike anything seen at the time. It was unthinkable that glass could be so structural on a seagoing vessel – but when Philippe Starck presented the initial design, Jobs responded, “I think you should make it all out of glass."

Here's six things you didn't know about one of the world's most famous superyachts...

1.   She was designed to look like an Apple product (charging port included)

Long, lean and gleaming silver, Venus' s minimalist design is purposefully suggestive of an Apple product. Innovative features include a false top deck that conceals the communication and television receivers from view (another signature of the tech brand) and a passarelle that, when opened, looks like the charging port of an iPhone.

2. Steve Jobs never stepped foot on board

Sadly, Jobs never had the chance to see Venus completed before his untimely death in 2011. The yacht remains in the family, now owned by his widow Laurene Powell Jobs. Jobs was widely reported saying the following to his biographer: "I know that it’s possible I will die and leave Laurene with a half-built boat. But I have to keep going on. If I don’t, it’s an admission that I’m about to die." Venus is entirely private and not available for charter.

3. Her interiors have never been seen –   but her wheelhouse shows something unusual

What do we know about Venus ? Her hull form was developed by De Voogt Naval Architects . Her interior volume totals 1,500GT. Key features include a side-loading tender garage , Jacuzzi and superyacht beach club . But when it comes to the elusive superyacht's interiors, the curtains have been shut for over a decade. 

When photographers have gotten up close, they've noticed something quite unusual. Photos have revealed that Venus has no ordinary bridge – instead, multiple Mac computer screens line the inside of the bridge windows. All else is rumour, including the accommodation's supposed sound-proofing. It's so comprehensive that guests (reportedly) have to rely on a high-tech internal system to communicate.

4. Her glass engineer also worked with Apple

Glass structural engineers Eckersley O’Callaghan were catapulted into the yachting arena with the commission of Venus . Their success comes as no surprise, with the London-based firm responsible for some of Apple’s most interesting structures. The glass cube of the Apple Fifth Avenue store in New York is their work, as is the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California, where – in an earthquake zone – a 41-metre diameter cylinder of glass panels is the sole support for an 80-tonne carbon fibre roof. 

Bonus fun fact : At the time of Venus' s development, Lloyd's was not yet open to the idea of using load-bearing glass. O’Callaghan's work-around was to build a hidden, 10-tonne aluminium structure to support Venus 's 15 tonnes of glass walls.

5. She cost more than €100 million to build

How much is Venus worth? While the exact cost has never been confirmed, estimates lie between €105 to €120 million – with Philippe Starck said to have earned $9 million USD for his role in her design.

6. She was recently spotted cruising in Australia

Over a decade after delivery and Venus still makes headlines wherever she goes. Laurene Jobs seems particularly partial to the Gold Coast, with the yacht frequently photographed in the area during the summer months. In August 2023, Venus once again drew the crowds when she docked in Cairns, a laid-back, tropical city referred to as the "Great Barrier Reef gateway". Other adventures onboard Venus included a trip to Fethiye, Turkey, Istanbul and the Greek Cyclades .

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Philippe Starck reveals the real story behind Steve Jobs' yacht

A blunder by a phone operator might have prevented the miracle from taking place and no one would have ever known about it. Philippe Starck still laughs at the thought. It was seven years ago, at the headquarters of his Parisian offices near the Place de la République. The employee had informed the famous French decorator that a Mr. Jobs had called. The young woman did not see who that might be—despite the fact that she probably had a Mac running in front of her and had been downloading music on her iPod for some time. Perhaps she had even seen Toy Story , the film that revolutionized animated features. Still, she had not made the connection with the founder of Apple, former owner of Pixar , the man who transformed technology into an object of desire and commerce. She had written down his name but had refused to disturb her boss. The caller, who had spoken English, hung up without leaving a number. “Can you imagine the aura of Jobs in 2007” chuckles Starck today. “He was basically God! And she doesn't put him through because she didn't know who he is! We were off to a good start.”

It was a miracle that the Californian divinity was not discouraged. “For anyone who knew Steve,” Starck adds, “he almost certainly wouldn't call back after such a humiliation.” A few weeks after this, "God" was on line again. This time, the Parisian designer was just leaving for Milan, to the annual furniture trade show, a ritual meeting place for the experts of planet design. A half-dozen motorcycle taxis awaited him, as well as members of his team, with their engines running. He barely had enough time to make the flight to Italy where a multitude of press conferences had been scheduled—being late was not an option. “I already had my helmet on when the operator caught me, breathless,” he says. “Monsieur Starck! Monsieur Starck! You know that person, that Mr. Jobs? He wants to talk to you!” I took off my helmet and heard his voice: “Would you like to make me a boat?” “Well… sure,” I replied. The two men only exchanged but a few words: “Fifteen seconds” of conversation, confirms Philippe Starck. To the American billionaire's direct question: “Will you know how?” he says he proudly replied, before blazing on to the airport, “Of course! I have palms in between my fingers and scales on my back. I am amphibian.”

The son of an engineer who designed airplanes, Starck spent a great part of his childhood admiring ships. At 15, he taught survival in the case of shipwreck at a sailing school in the bay of Morlaix, he and his brother also raced boats on the Seine. “I always had boats, whatever the size,” he told the quaterly Mer & Bateaux in 2012 . I always have one in the concept stage or the building stage. My wife and I have lived in places where we could have a boat moored in front of our house. We live on the water and for the water.” Famous for his hotel and restaurant designs all over the world —the Café Costes, the Mama Shelter hotel, the Meurice and the Royal Monceau in Paris, the Royalton in New York, the Mondrian in Los Angeles and the Fasano in Rio—Starck did not necessarily want to design yachts for anyone beside himself. In Starck Explications , a manifesto published in 2003 for the exhibition dedicated to his work at the Pompidou Center, he tells the story of a prank pulled on a client who wanted to commission him a yacht : he had advised him to first go for a swim to see whether he truly needed a boat! Later, a “gorgeous woman,” whose name he does not mention, made him a new offer (it was Hala Fares, the spouse of the businessman and Lebanese vice-premier minister Issam Fares) that he declined because he found the very idea of a yacht “structurally vulgar.” The lady, cunningly, defied him to build one that avoided vulgarity, and for her he designed Wedge Too . Six years later, in 2008, Starck conceived the A for Andrey Menichenko, the Russian oligarch. 119 meters long and weighing 6000 tons, it’s one of the greatest motor yachts ever made, and its cost was an estimated $300 million. Its aggressive form was the object of very lively criticism: in an article on January 23, 2008, the Wall Street Journal even wondered whether it wasn’t “the world’s ugliest boat.”

Moreover, Starck prides himself on helping save the Bénéteau ship yard in Vendée from bankruptcy by designing a line of sailboats for it, then conceiving a revolutionary single-rudder racer, Virtuelle , designed in 1997, for a very wealthy Italian (even though the plans are officially signed by a transalpine naval architect). According to Starck, ten years later, it was this sailboat, with its minimal lines, that Steve Jobs cited as an example to persuade him to work for him—“ Virtuelle is the most beautiful boat I’ve seen in my life,” is what he told him ( Mer & Bateaux , December 2012). Starck, who is not averse to tributes, and is prompt to quote this Rousseau sentence : “I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices,” took the compliment as a challenge. Jobs too had his contradictions. In 1995, after Pixar ’s successful skylight public offering, he had said he “was not planning on buying a yacht.” But Venus was not going to be just any yacht.

THE ASCETIC AND THE BON VIVANT

On April 28, 2007, Philippe Starck and his companion, Jasmine —he would marry her the following December—turned up in front of Steve Jobs residence in Palo Alto, California, in north Silicon Valley. The area seemed ordinary, the entrance gate did not look like much. A driver had taken them there after a twelve-hour flight between Paris and Los Angeles. Noting the modesty of the place, the French designer felt obliged to add : “We’re going to Steve Jobs’, you know, the head of Apple.” But the chauffeur did not turned around, it was the right address. “We got out. The gate in old ironwork was about a meter tall and there was a detail that struck me and pleased me, it closed with a plumbing jointure. I said to myself, “Wait, it might actually be here after all.” Starck opened it, crossed a “small yard,” knocked on the glass of what looked like a kitchen door. “It vibrated the way old tiles do. No one came but everything was open. Suddenly, a ghostly silhouette appeared, dressed in black. “Hi Philippe!” It was him, he kissed us. He was, straight away, extremely warm.”

It was there, in that “very humble little home in a chic and classic American suburb,” and which Philippe Starck deems was no bigger than 200 sq. meters, “that looked like 150,” that the two men came to know each other. Over the next four years, in the course of regular work sessions, a discreet and stimulating friendship united the two ingenious creative spirits, both endowed with equally oversized egos.

“He was the god of fastidiousness and I, I was the emperor of fastidiousness,” proclaims Philippe Starck quite simply. I am meeting with the designer in Paris, at one of his offices with a view on Place du Trocadéro. I had obtained the interview by dint of persistence and persuasion—after all, Jobs himself had had to call more than once. Starck is always in between two planes and ten homes (he owns properties—among other places—in Paris, Venice, Cap-Ferret.). He wants to be everywhere and nowhere, omnipresent but elusive. After all, he has called his company Ubik, borrowed from Phillip K. Dick’s masterpiece in which characters evolve in parallel universes.

Today, his company's offices and his main home are on the third floor of a majestic 1930s building with a panoramic view of the Eiffel tower and white spaces. Philippe Starck is wearing his usual outfit: jeans, sneakers and a hoodie. Jasmine is near him. A tall brunette, she too is wearing an informal uniform—black jeans and sneakers. A former publicist for the LVMH Group, she never leaves the side of her 65-year-old genius (she is 23 years younger), she monitors and records his words, intervenes, if necessary, to insert a recollection, corroborate a date, clarify a circumstance. A group of assistants finishes sweeping the room we are meeting in. “Cleaning,” in the true sense of the word, as in the figurative sense, is one of his obsessions. One day, he tells me, as he still couldn’t get over having been received by Steve Jobs in a house so wanting in luxury (in 2008, Forbes estimated the latter’s fortune to be $5.7 billion, the equivalent of more than 4 billion euros), he was emboldened to ask, “Steve, do you really live here?” “ Yes, why?” he answered. “It’s just that… everything is so clean, orderly, so tidy…" The Apple boss replied , “Oh, you want to see a mess?” and led him to his office. “There were a few newspapers scattered on the floor and two pairs of sneakers. This, for him, was the height of disorder.

As he recalls it, Steve Jobs lived in the middle of emptiness. “Not chic minimalism,” he states. “Rustic, rather. There was just nothing. A couch, three armchairs, a coffee table in the living room… Nothing.” In the biography that he devoted to the Californian inventor ( Steve Jobs , JC Lattes, 2011), Walter Isaacson also describes a man who was “so demanding with furniture” that his homes were empty. Before the one that Philippe Starck visited, he did nonetheless own a fourteen-room hacienda . For the house in Palo Alto, bought after his marriage to Laurene Powell in 1997, Jobs had to force himself to set up a minimum level of comfort—beds for a start—basic requirements for a family with three children (Reed, Erin and Eve). His character, sustained by Oriental philosophy was marked by austerity and bareness. On this point, the two men were in sync. “I’ve tried to be inspired by the Asian idea that emptiness is more important than fullness.” he wrote in Starck explications . Hence, the famous transparent chair he designed in 1998, and named The Marie, that is introduced as an “almost perfect object.” Just as the work that culminated in the birth of Venus tried to reach the “elegance of the minimal” according to Philippe Starck

Between April 2007 and the fall of 2011 (Steve Jobs died on October 5th, 2011), the Starcks travelled to Palo Alto one Sunday a month, usually with Thierry Gaugain—“my right arm, an exceptional character,” states the designer. Each session lasted twelve almost uninterrupted hours. The work was done on a coffee table, their backs bent, their noses only three feet above the floor. That is how it was. A torment for the bon vivant Philippe Starck, the usual posture for the ascetic Steve Jobs, invariably dressed in the black turtlenecks designed for him by Issey Miyake. It never occurred to the billionaire to even offer them a drink. “A large window hung above the space where we used to work,” recalls Starck. “We were literally cooking. From time to time Laurene would look in, “Have you offered them something to drink?” He would then return with a glass of water. There was never any food in his kitchen. Other than once when we ate together.” Starck remembers their host barely touched the dishes. Apart from his strict and hardcore vegan nutritional fads and phobias, Jobs was already gravely ill, cancer had been eating away at him since 2003. The Starcks say that each time they hugged him, they had the feeling that they would soon be holding nothing but a sheet of paper in their arms. “It still makes me tear up,” the decorator says—and while he easily draws the picture of an “poser," or "a show off", his eyes do, in fact, fill with tears at the memory.

A POT OF HONEY EVERY YEAR

In his conversations with Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs told the story of his yacht’s creation stating that Philippe Starck simply “helped” him design its interior design. It would be an understatement to say the latter did not appreciate this delegation. He considers himself the true parent of this floating unidentified object made of aluminum and glass, with its perfectly flat teak bridges and a beveled prow. If he is speaking—“for the first and the last time,” he emphasizes,—about his work on this project, and his relationship with Jobs, it is not only to provide “ a more nuanced analysis” of the strange client who commissioned it, but also, in great part, to set the record straight.

For him, there are two important facts that must be remembered. The first is that he, Philippe Starck, was chosen out of everyone else by the great man to bring his nautical dream into material existence. He recalls an anecdote told by Steve Jobs : “Every year we go on vacation on my friend Larry Ellison’s boat [the other Silicon Valley genius, founder of Oracle, according to Forbes in 2013 the world’s fifth richest man, is a sailing fanatic]. And every year, I say to myself, I too should have a boat built. But I don’t do it. Two years ago, I decided I was going to go for it. I looked at everything, asked everyone, and came to the conclusion that only one person can do it: you.” Even with an ego inflated with helium, how can one not keel over at such praise? “It was more than an honor,” Starck says, “a sacrament.” No doubt he means a consecration. Liturgical words are omnipresent in the mouth of this claimed atheist. During our conversation, he later invoked the “philosophical communion” of two souls in love with perfection.

So, Super Starck left their first meeting entranced. Galvanized by the confidence the most demanding of clients has placed in him. “He was giving me carte blanche, in some way.” The following night, in Los Angeles, he says he was struck by inspiration. Here, the second important fact, “I designed it all—all, all, all, in one and a half hours. The whole thing was wrapped up. I work extremely quickly.” Under what circumstances? “I was in bed. My wife was sleeping next to me. Los Angeles reminded me of Steve, Steve sailing… I said to myself, “Hang on, I’m going to draw it.” Jobs had given him very simples rules to work with. The length of the hull : 82 meters exactly. The number of passengers: “Family and crew. A total of six rooms, all of them identical.” And above all, one requirement: silence. “Steve wanted to be sure that the teenagers could be set up in the front of the boat when he was at the back and vice-versa. He was obsessed with silence. In his home, children did not make noise, nor the dog, nor his wife… no one made any noise, ever.”

Even on July 11th, 2008, the day the world discovered the iPhone 3G, the little house remained preternaturally calm. Starck remembers being the bewitched witness of this moment . “The entire world was in an uproar, people were standing in line for hours, in front of stores. It was the greatest launch of all time [barely three days later, Apple announced it had sold over a million units], the greatest investment and he barely seemed to register it. Not a single phone call made or received. Wow! That's true aristocracy in organization and mastery of self.”

At the next meeting, initially planned as the second contact between them, Starck arrived “with all the drawings.” He was carrying a large suitcase—“1.2 meters, 1.3 meters,” he deems—that contained the mock up of the future yacht. After a moment of perplexity, Jobs was wonderstruck and supposedly exclaimed: “It’s more than I could never [sic] imagine.” Starck’s freeform translation: “The world’s most powerful man, known as being the most intransigent, incapable of saying thank you or bravo, was telling us, “This is beyond all my dreams.””

Incredible indeed. Jobs’ biography, that was published after his death, underscores the genius’ versatility, his disingenuousness, his propensity to humiliate, to be obnoxious with his most faithful friends and collaborators—in short, to burn everything he adored. Steve Wozniak, Apple’s co-founder, or John Sculley, the historical CEO of the Apple company, paid the price. “He could be charming with those he detested, just as he could be detestable with those he loved.” writes Isaacson. Had their collaboration lasted longer, perhaps Philippe Starck too would have had to suffer Steve Jobs’ moods. When I suggested this hypothesis, he frowned. “I’m not sure about that,” he answered me, “He liked us. Through this boat, we came to be among the three or four friends that really mattered to him.” As proof of this, he offers the fact that every year, the California billionaire would send a pot of honey from his own hives. And that he sometimes expressed a touching preoccupation for to the young couple he and Jasmine formed. On the fated day, when in religious silence, the plans drawn by the decorator were “scanned and rescanned,” examined from every angle by Jobs in the course of a few minutes, he says he only heard him utter four “very pleasing” sentences. The first was, “Are you going to get married?” Answer: “Maybe.” The second: “Are you planning to have children?” An even more elliptical answer, “Euh…” “I knew it, I was telling Laurene,” he had smilingly answered. And the last: “Very well, carry on like this. See you next month.” For Starck, this too is a point of pride: “I don’t believe he’d ever experienced it in his life. We’re used to it: in general, people don’t talk, they find whatever is being presented to them to be very fine. But coming from him—especially when we learned in the book, after his death, the way he treated others—it was stunning.”

Philippe Starck admits, nevertheless, to having first-hand experienced the down side of this 'detail freak'(dixit his autobiography).The four years that followed the initial approval consisted of a millimeter by millimeter examination of the plans. “In order to achieve the height of intelligence in everything,” explains the designer rather cryptically. According to him, nothing was modified of his initial drawings, but everything was revisited. “With Thierry Gaugain, we reinvented marine technology, no less,” he says. “Nothing like it had been undertaken, not since the dawn of time. Still, the client argued about every detail, and for Starck it sometimes went “beyond the annoying.” “I don't want to sound pretentious,” he says, “but we are professionals. We have designed rockets [for Virgin Galactic], motorcycles [for Aprilia], electric cars, boats… When we present a solution, we know it’s the right one. With Thierry Gaugain, we would float him flurries of ideas at each meeting, and for his part, he’d answer, “No, no, no.” Until the moment when, because he had in mind the shipyard's schedule, he would pick an idea and say, “I’ve got it, this is what we’ll do.” And, to our shattered stupefaction, we would realize it was the solution we had presented him with the previous month or two years prior. “But Steve…” It was to no avail, he had appropriated it.”

It seems this was Steve Jobs' way. Those close to him had resigned themselves to referring to his “distortion of reality” syndrome. The most enormous distortion in Starck’s eyes was the one forming the basis of the “lie” perpetrated about him in Jobs' talks with Isaacson that served primarily as material for his hagiography (before devoting himself to the founder of Apple, this ex-head of CNN and Time had written biographies of two monumental figures in science: Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin). On page 595 of the book, he writes, “To outfit the interior, he hired Philippe Starck, the French designer, who would come regularly to Palo Alto to work on the plans.” Starck is still indignant. “He must have said that two months before he died,” he snaps, ”How could he still want to lie to serve his own glory? So powerful was his ego, such was the distortion of reality within him that he was incapable of recognizing the work of another person.” In the version of the story according to Starck, that he presents as the only acceptable one, beginning with the second meeting, “not a single wall, not the smallest detail of the hull” underwent any changes from what he had imagined in his bed in Los Angeles. “We looked at everything during the course of four years, but nothing shifted by even a tenth of a millimeter.” Seated next to him, Jasmine too sighs at the ingratitude of “Steve.” “And yet he displayed such great confidence in us.”

A PHILOSOPHICAL OBJECT

On a Sunday in 2009, the year of his liver transplant, Jobs told them, “I’m going to disappear for three months, I will call you on such and such a day at 10 o’clock.” On the said day and hour, he asked them to come back to Palo Alto. A reunion. “We were very moved,” recalls Starck. “He hated personal questions, but at the time, after such a resurrection, I was compelled to ask him, “Have you thought about your life? Are there things you would like to change?” He answered, “Nothing. I would not want a different one. I have had a great deal of time to reflect, I have thought about the boat. There are, today, three things that matter to me: my family, my company and you guys.” He was talking about Jasmine and I! He added, “My only problem is that you don’t live on my street.” Moved, the Starcks set to work, bending over the coffee table. Five years later, in his immaculate office, Starck proclaims this with a bit of exaltation, “There will never again be a boat of that quality again. Because never again will two madmen come together to accomplish such a task. There'll never again be so much creativity, rigor, and above all philosophy, applied to a material creation. It was not a yacht that Steve and I were constructing, we were embarked on a philosophical action, implemented according to a quasi-religious process. We formed a single brain with four lobes.”

One might wonder what exactly an 82-meter philosophical object, capable of crossing all the world’s seas, looks like. “When we talked, it was not to decide whether it was better to use aluminum or steel. The questions that arose were of an ethical order. As for the details, try to imagine the height of minimalism.” Where specifics are concerned, that is not a lot to go with. At most, the designer proffers that the cockpit was “a piece of curved glass, 23 meters long, 6 centimeters thick,”—a prowess whose materialization was entrusted to the chief engineer of the Apple Stores. He even refuses to confirm the description of the control panel equipped with seven 27” iMac screens, released in 2012 at the time of the ship’s launch, upon its completion by the Royal de Vries ship yard in the south-west of Amsterdam (this is also true of a few other particularities, like the presence of a large terrace with an integrated Jacuzzi, and avant-gardist processes for aeration, and completely silent electronically controlled blinds.) “There are just commands, but there is no complex home automation. Each person would have their own portable controls with them.” he explained in Mers & Bateaux . Photographs of this floating building were taken at its launch from the Dutch shipyard, but no views of the interior have ever been communicated. “The philosophy was the same as for the exterior: the least of everything,” confides Starck. With a reproachful pout, he adds, “In Steve’s lifetime, I had formulated recommendations for the furnishings, but Laurene put in the furniture she wanted. I’m not there to interfere in these people’s taste.”

Starck also refused to confirm the cost of this prodigious vessel of the seas. The press has mentioned 100 million euros. He neither says yes nor no and dodges the question with this circumlocution: “Its price is totally normal relative to the work undertaken and to its religious quality.” We’ll have to wait for Laurene Jobs or her children to sell the yacht to hope to learn its worth—and even then, there’s nothing to say the transaction figures would be divulged. As for the rest, it seems unlikely that the inheritors should choose one day to get rid of what was the last dream of the founder of Apple. “I know it’s possible that I may die and leave Laurene with a half-finished boat,” he confided to Isaacson a few months before his passing, “but I must continue. Otherwise, it would be admitting that I am going to die.”

The Venus sailed, granted. Yet its launch was not without turmoil. When he heard the men at the Royal de Vries shipyard usurp the boat’s paternity in front of Jobs’ family, collaborators and friends, Philippe Starck flew into a rage. “It was a good shipyard, but with people whose moral fiber was particularly elastic and who had the staggering nerve to say that they had designed this extraordinary boat, the most inventive in the world,” he says indignantly. “I haver never experienced in my entire life such violence through a lie.” Jasmine interrupts him to elaborate on the scene, “You said, “You've got to be kidding!” and we took off.” No doubt, his heart was still raging when on the following December 21st, the French decorator ordered the yacht seized in the port of Aaalsmeer.” He invoked a lawsuit brought for two unpaid invoices. Indeed, Steve Jobs’ inheritors refused to pay the 3 million euros that are owed to Starck on a total fee of 9 million euros—they consider the $6 million already paid match the percentage agreed upon in advance.

“Some lawyer probably wanted to look clever,” the decorator murmurs today. At the time, he was forced to admit no written document formalized the financial aspect of his agreement with Jobs. His representative in Holland explained that the two men were “very close during the period of the creation of the design,” and during the construction, adding that it was “in part why no formal work agreement had been drawn up.” Three days later, a compromise was reached between the two parties’ lawyers and the seizure order was lifted. The Venus embarked a cargo ship not long thereafter, headed for the United States. No image of Steve Jobs aboard it or overseeing its construction has ever been shown—no one even knows if he was able to see the boat with his own eyes. Philippe Starck, for his part, has never seen it sail.

Steve Jobs’ visionary superyacht collided with a Mexican billionaire’s boat 

Steve Jobs’ $130 million former yacht, Venus, was accidentally involved in a billionaire boat collision off the coast of Italy. The Apple cofounder, a legendary tech inventor and CEO, passed away in 2011 at the age of 56.

The 256-foot-long vessel, now owned by Jobs’ widow, businesswoman Laurene Powell Jobs, was anchored off the coast of Naples when a change in the wind caused it to drift, Business Insider reported , citing a spokesperson from Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective. 

Venus collided with another superyacht, Lady Moura , owned by the third-richest man in Mexico, Ricardo Salinas Pliego . Only crew members were aboard the Venus , according to the spokesperson. 

In a video posted by Salinas Pliego on social media, those aboard the Lady Moura could be seen shouting to get the attention of the crew aboard Venus, to no avail. In a post on X Wednesday, a clearly irritated Salinas Pliego said in Spanish that Venus left “a big scratch that is going to cost a lot to fix.”

“I’d like to know what the captain and crew were doing that they didn’t notice a yacht as big as mine in front of them,” the cofounder and chairman of conglomerate Grupo Salinas wrote on X.

There was no shortage of idiots in the world, he added.

No me lo van a creer pero nos chocaron el yate mientras estábamos en Nápoles. Les cuento ☕️… el yate de Steve Jobs fundador de Apple (ahora de su esposa Laurene), nos pegó mientras estábamos anclados frente a Nápoles. Yo quisiera saber que andaba haciendo el capitán y la… pic.twitter.com/R1XVzZFGkD — Don Ricardo Salinas Pliego (@RicardoBSalinas) August 7, 2024

The multibillionaire, who owns a chain of stores in Latin America called Elektra that offers everything from motorcycles to electronics with financing, joked that his social media followers should buy Apple products from his stores so Powell Jobs could afford to pay for the repairs to his boat.

Jobs’ yacht launched in 2012, just a year after the Apple founder’s death from pancreatic cancer. Jobs collaborated with French designer Philippe Starck over four years to create a ship that matched the minimalist aesthetic of an Apple product. Although he never set foot on deck, the ship ended up being one of Jobs’ final passion projects, according to Vanity Fair .

“It was not a yacht that Steve and I were constructing, we were embarked on a philosophical action, implemented according to a quasi-religious process. We formed a single brain with four lobes,” Starck told Vanity Fair.

The damages to Lady Moura will likely be covered by insurance, which can range from 5% to 6% of the vessel’s total value. Salinas Pliego reportedly bought the superyacht for $125 million in 2022 . The two ship captains apparently met immediately to discuss the “minor repairs needed,” Boat International reported , citing a source close to the matter.

Although bothered by the crash, Salinas Pliego seemed to want to cast off from the subject.

“Oh well, we’re going to continue enjoying our vacation,” he wrote on X.

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Video shows moment Steve Jobs' former superyacht collides with yacht in Italy

Steve job's venus cost $120 million when it was built in 2012, by gerardo pons • published august 7, 2024 • updated on august 7, 2024 at 10:03 pm.

Video posted on social media shows the moment Steve Jobs' former superyacht Venus collided with another yacht in Naples, Italy.

The video, posted by Mexican telecom billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego on X, shows the moment the 257-foot-long Venus, now owned by Steve Jobs' former wife Laurene Powell Jobs, collided with Pliego's 344 foot-long Lady Moura on July 22.

"You guys won't believe this, but our yacht was hit while we were in Naples," Pliego wrote to his followers on X. "Apple founder Steve Jobs' yacht (now owned by his wife Laurene) hit us while we were anchored off Naples."

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No me lo van a creer pero nos chocaron el yate mientras estábamos en Nápoles. Les cuento ☕️… el yate de Steve Jobs fundador de Apple (ahora de su esposa Laurene), nos pegó mientras estábamos anclados frente a Nápoles. Yo quisiera saber que andaba haciendo el capitán y la… pic.twitter.com/R1XVzZFGkD — Don Ricardo Salinas Pliego (@RicardoBSalinas) August 7, 2024

Pliego added his boat only suffered a few large scratches, which "will cost a lot to repair."

"I would like to know what the (Venus) captain and crew were doing that they didn't see a yacht the size of mine in front of them."

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In a statement to Business Insider, Emerson Collective, an organization that Powell Jobs founded and is president of, said the collision happened while both boats were anchoring off Naples, adding only the crew was onboard.

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Designed by famed French architect Philippe Starck, Steve Job's Venus cost $120 million when it was built in 2012. The boat had its first voyage shortly after the Apple cofounder's death.

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Here’s the First Look Inside Steve Jobs’ Crazy Last Project

S teve Jobs’ luxury yacht, Venus, was photographed recently, providing a glimpse of the interior for the first time.

Photos of 100 million euro yacht were taken by people at Woods Hole Inn in Cape Cod, Mass., Gizmodo reported Monday. The French-designed yacht debuted in 2012, one year after Jobs died, but until now there have been photos of only the exterior.

Have a look:

View this post on Instagram A post shared by woodsholeinn (@woodsholeinn)

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Your Insider’s Look at Steve Jobs’ Yacht Venus

The Venus Yacht was built for Steve Jobs, or it almost was. Though Jobs commissioned the yacht, it was launched in 2012, a year after Jobs passed away. He never got to see the finished product. It’s been said that he actually spent the last several years before his death helping to custom design the Venus as his intent was to use it to sail the world with his family.

Venus was designed by a company called Ubik, owned by designer Phillipe Starck. Starck  handled both the interior design and the exterior design. The build was undertaken by renowned shipyard Feadship out of the Netherlands.

The yacht is a little lighter than some of her size thanks to the fact she doesn’t have a steel hull like many superyachts do. Instead, she features both an aluminum hull and an aluminum superstructure. She also features teak decks.

The exterior design features many straight lines and right angles. The stern is squared and it features an axe bow. There’s also very little to see on deck even from above. Unlike most yachts , there is no visible radar arch or satellite equipment because it’s obscured within a box structure to maintain that simple design look. 

Who Owns the Venus Yacht?

As a result of the death of Steve Jobs the yacht became part of his estate which belongs to his widow Laurene Powell Jobs. She has maintained ownership of the yacht since it was finished in 2012. There was a brief time when the yacht was impounded after its construction. This was caused by a dispute over payment. Phillipe Starck claimed that the fee for his work was never paid in full. He was said to have designed the yacht for about $9 million and $3 million was still owing. After 10 days, Jobs’ estate settled the account and the yacht was delivered.

How Big is the Yacht Venus?

The Venus measures in at a respectable 257 feet in length. So clearly she qualifies as a superyacht, even if she doesn’t quite measure up to Jeff Bezos’ 417-foot megayacht Koru . The Venus also has a beam of about 38 feet and her volume comes in at 1,876 GT which is actually a little on the light side for such a large yacht, in part due to the aluminum construction.

How Much Did the Venus Yacht Cost?

Steve Jobs commissioned the yacht for an impressive $120 million. Yachts like the Eclipse are alleged to be upwards of $1.5 billion and even the massive Azzam has been confirmed at around $600 million so obviously the Venus is not the most expensive vessel, but it’s nothing to sniff at, either.

We know from what we mentioned above that $9 million of that alone went to the designer of the yacht. Like many yachts of this size there is also a considerable cost related to the yearly operations of the vessel. Things like crew salaries, taxes and fuel costs are considerable. In light of that, it’s been estimated that it costs between $10 million and $20 million just to keep the boat on the water for a year. That may seem steep but it’s definitely normal for most yachts.

Is the Venus Yacht Available for Charter?

Jobs was a notoriously private man in many ways and his family remains the same, at least insofar as this yacht is concerned. It’s never been made available for charter and, in fact, very little is known about it.

How Fast is the Venus Yacht and What Engines Does It Use?

The Venus makes use of a pair of twin diesel MTU (16V 4000 M73) 16-cylinder engines. Together they produce  3,433 horsepower. This allows her to cruise at speeds of 16 knots. She can also reach a maximum speed of 22 knots which is fairly substantial for a yacht of her size.

What’s the Interior of the Venus Yacht Like?

As you can tell from the unique hull design, there is a minimalist aesthetic to the yacht. It does resemble some Apple products from the time period in its way. Towards the after of the vessel on the starboard side there’s a launch bay for tenders that can be deployed by crane and apparently the design included a wheelhouse powered by seven 27″ iMacs.

The aft of the vessel opens to a large beach club for guests to enjoy the ocean and the sun, features a swim platform and lounge area.

The yacht has the capacity to accommodate 12 guests across 6 cabins. There is also room for a crew of 22 to maintain the vessel. The design is simple and clean all over. Glass, silver and white with everything polished is what you see all over the vessel.

Features and Amenities

The features of the Venus are actually totally unknown to this day. Jobs has never invited photographers on board to get a glimpse of what the cabins or living spaces may look like so there’s no word on how it all came together. Likewise, the designer has not shared any of the blueprints or ideas that went into making the yacht. This is common among designers of superyachts, however, and many have to sign non-disclosure agreements so they couldn’t share details even if they wanted to. 

Until such time as Laurene Jobs opts to either open the yacht to the public or sell it, the interior details are going to remain a mystery beyond what observers are able to glimpse from afar.

The Bottom Line

The Venus was a yacht partially designed and commissioned by Steve Jobs before his death in 2011. The yacht was finished in 2012 so he never got to see the final product on the water. Jobs once admitted he knew he might die before the yacht was finished but didn’t want to stop his work because he felt like it was an admission that he was going to die and didn’t want to quit like that.

The yacht is very uniquely designed in a minimalist style which reminds many of how Apple products in general are designed. The yacht cost Jobs about $120 million. It measures in at 257 feet in length.

Laurene Jobs is the current owner of the yacht and she has maintained her privacy with the vessel. As such, not only is it not available for charter but no one has seen images of the inside either.

My grandfather first took me fishing when I was too young to actually hold up a rod on my own. As an avid camper, hiker, and nature enthusiast I'm always looking for a new adventure.

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Steve Jobs' former yacht Venus collided with another superyacht off the coast of Naples

Venus, the yacht built for Steve Jobs , collided with another yacht off Italy's coast.

It's unclear which yacht struck which or when exactly the crash occurred.

With a minimalist design, Venus is one of the world's most iconic superyachts.

Venus, Steve Jobs' former superyacht — now owned by his wife, the philanthropist and investor Laurene Powell Jobs — has collided with another superyacht off of the Italian coast.

A spokesperson from Powell Jobs' Emerson Collective who spoke with a crewmember confirmed to Business Insider that Venus, the 78-meter yacht Steve Jobs commissioned, had collided with Lady Moura, a 105-meter yacht. The collision happened on July 22 off the coast of Naples, Italy.

The spokesperson said that only crew were onboard the yacht and that both boats were anchored when a sudden change of wind led to the collision.

Venus is cruising in the Ligurian Sea, while Lady Moura made its way to Mykonos on Wednesday, based on publicly available tracking data from Marine Traffic.

Videos posted on social media show the strikingly minimalist Venus and the Lady Moura coming into contact. It's not clear from the videos which superyacht struck which, though someone who said they were aboard the Lady Moura seemed to blame Venus' crew on social media, SuperYacht Times reported. The person said the damage was "only a scratch, albeit a significant one that will be costly to repair."

Others on social media said that the Venus appeared to be moored and that Lady Moura seemed to have swung into the boat. BI hasn't been able to independently verify either claim.

The Italian Marina Militare didn't respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. The owner of the Lady Moura couldn't be reached.

No matter how little damage may have been done, insurance will probably cover it. Yacht insurance , which can cost six figures each month, is one of the largest costs incurred by yacht owners.

Venus, built by the top yacht-builder Feadship, was delivered after Jobs died in 2011 and was worth $130 million upon completion. The Apple cofounder was heavily involved in the design process alongside the French architect and decorator Philippe Starck.

"Venus comes from the philosophy of minimum," Starck said of her design. "The elegance of the minimum, approaching dematerialization."

Jobs and Starck spent four years working on her design, the designer told Vanity Fair , holding monthly meetings to discuss her specifications. She has six identical cabins, was built to maximize absolute silence, and, upon delivery, included the most up-to-date technology.

"There will never again be a boat of that quality again. Because never again will two madmen come together to accomplish such a task," Starck told the magazine. "It was not a yacht that Steve and I were constructing, we were embarked on a philosophical action, implemented according to a quasi-religious process. We formed a single brain with four lobes." August 7, 2024 — This story has been updated with a statement from a Laurene Powell Jobs spokesperson.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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Jobs’ boat and mexican billionaire’s yacht get into fender bender.

(Bloomberg) -- Venus, the yacht late Apple founder Steve Jobs designed with Philippe Starck, got in a minor accident in Naples with Lady Moura, a luxury vessel owned by Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego.

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Salinas, who is vacationing in the Mediterranean off the coast of Italy, posted a video on X showing Venus slowly drifting toward his yacht while his crew frantically yelled and whistled trying to prevent the collision.

“I’d like to know what the captain and crew were doing that they didn’t see a yacht the size of mine in front of them,” Salinas wrote in a post shared on Wednesday.

He urged clients of his Grupo Elektra retail chain to purchase Apple products to help Jobs’ widow, philanthropist and entrepreneur Laurene Powell Jobs, pay for the “inconvenience.”

“It will take a lot of polish to get that scratch out,” Elektra quickly replied on X, with a link to its online shop.

The minor incident, which happened on July 22, was the result of a sudden change in the wind speed near where both yachts were staying, according to a representative of the owner of Venus. The person said Lady Moura had two times the amount of chain out that Venus did and it was Salinas’ vessel that hit Venus. Having more chain out gives a vessel more leeway to drift. Neither yacht dragged anchor, the person added.

The local coast guard in Italy confirmed that both vessels were anchored in the Naples district of Mergellina in late July when the incident took place. But captains of both yachts decided not to alert authorities, so no probe was initiated.

No member from the Powell Jobs family was aboard when the incident happened, the Venus representative added.

Salinas Pliego’s Grupo Salinas said in a statement on Thursday that Lady Moura anchored in the Bay of Naples at a depth of 40 meters with seven shackles of chain deployed, the minimum required for safe anchoring. The amount of chain was calculated using the International Association of Classification Societies (IACS) standards.

“Several hours later, the Venus arrived at the anchorage and seemingly misjudged the length of the chain that the Lady Moura had in the water,” it added. “A violent squall with winds of 50-55 knots from an unexpected direction — different from the prevailing forecasts — caused the impact. Fortunately, the damages to both yachts were minimal and cosmetic. Within hours, both parties resolved the situation amicably and professionally.”

Jobs worked for years on the Venus design while already stricken by cancer, according to a 2014 Starck interview.

--With assistance from Donato Paolo Mancini.

(Expands description of Powell Jobs in paragraph 4, adds comments from Grupo Salinas in paragraphs 9 and 10)

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Steve Jobs’s stunning $120 million Venus superyacht is stealing the spotlight on Australia’s Gold Coast. Owned by the Apple founder’s billionaire widow, Laurene Powell, this futuristic 255-foot-long vessel features 6 bedrooms and 27 Mac computers for entertainment.

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