Rumor mills are abuzz with news of centibillionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s superyacht Launchpad’s arrival in the United States on her maiden voyage. The luxury vessel by Feadship arrived at Port Everglades in Florida. The ship, worth almost $300 million, was in the company of her support vessel, Wingman, that was already moored in Florida and awaiting the mothership. The support vessel was formerly known as Dapple and belonged to American video game billionaire, Gabe Newell. Project 1010, or Launchpad Yacht, as it is now christened, was commissioned by Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin, who couldn’t receive the gorgeous 387-footer owing to sanctions.
His misfortune became the Meta boss’ megayacht and is finally out of Dutch waters after wasting away for a year in the Netherlands with no owner in sight. Interestingly, despite these fabulous purchases, Zuckerberg has made no formal announcement regarding the ship, especially Launchpad, that journeyed 4,700 miles from the Feadship facility via St Maarten to Port Everglades.
The man worth $174 billion was spotted aboard the vessel in the Netherlands shipyard, which does in a way confirm it is now his floating asset. Youtuber eSysman SuperYacht and UK tabloid The Sun have published that the Silicon Valley tycoon is indeed the new owner of the Feadship beauty.
The Dutch government permitted the sale of the pleasure craft to non-Russians, making this centibillionaire Meta CEO an ideal and acceptable candidate.
The $300 million ship is already in Florida though we speculate it will not stay in Florida for very long and may soon be sailing towards Hawaii where Zuckerberg is building one of the largest homes in the US, bigger than Central Park, featuring several mansions, an underground bunker, and more. A stellar five-decker like the $300 million Launchpad and $30 million Wingman Yacht are the perfect additions to his urban utopia.
Who is Vladimir Potanin?
Worth $31.4 billion per Bloomberg, the president of Norilsk Nickel is one of the richest men in Russia. The 63-year-old son of a trade diplomat and doctor also controls Rosbank, a Russian universal bank. Potanin is dubbed the mastermind behind the country’s so-called loans-for-shares program. He teamed up with billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov to form the International Company for Finance & Investments in 1992 and also formed Onexim Bank, which became Russia’s largest private bank at the time. Their union collapsed in 2007. The Russian businessman was sanctioned by the UK in 2022, which set fire to his plans of bringing home a beautiful Feadship superyacht.
Potanin is the only Russian to have signed The Giving Pledge and aims to donate at least half of his wealth to charity. He is also involved in a legal battle with his former spouse of 31 years, Natalia Potanina, in the UK’s Supreme Court, in what can be dubbed one of the most high-value divorce cases in English legal history. Potanin is seeking to overturn a Court of Appeal decision that halted Mrs. Potanina’s $9 billion claim. He acted swiftly and relocated his $300 million luxury yacht, Nirvana, to a secure superyacht haven in Dubai, a move that was imperative as he already lost Project 1010.
