As you all know, it’s Boat Day on Aftermath, which gives rise to an obvious question: What’s Gabe Newell up to? The sea-loving founder of one of the most insanely profitable companies ever recently described himself as effectively retired despite still working all the time and noted that scuba diving is part of his daily routine. He also owns an armada of yachts worth roughly $1 billion. And so, to put as fine a point on it as humanly possible, he recently bought a yacht company.
Boat International, a publication whose name I cannot help but laugh at, reports that Newell purchased Oceanco, one of the world’s leading builders of custom superyachts. In an accompanying press release, Oceanco assured its ultra-wealthy clientele that despite a new captain taking the wheel, it’s going to keep building incredibly large boats.
“Gabe Newell is not entering this world as a financier or a strategist, but as a hands-on visionary who respects the sea, the craft, and above all, the people who make it possible,” Oceanco wrote. “He wants Oceanco to continue on what it already does best: placing people first. This is not about buying a yacht company. It's about plugging into a team and exploring what kind of future they can create when nothing holds them back.”
This is important, because rich people fucking love big boats. As the rich have gotten richer over the course of the past few decades, yacht collecting has become a pastime for those who believe themselves both inheritors of the Earth and also entirely bereft of responsibility to its environment or people. In part, it’s a simple matter of social status: What better way to flaunt your wealth to both your peers and the local peasants than a towering sea city from which you can descend at will, like God delivering an edict? What could feel better, if you’re a wealth-drunk sociopath whose brain is shrinking by the day, than hearing that your friend built an 80-meter yacht and replying “Well fuck you, mine is gonna be 85 meters”?
But of course, rich people wouldn’t be spending sums from their ill-gotten dragon hoards unless there was some kind of society-immiserating loophole for them to exploit. As Insider explains:
Borrowing against yachts or jets at the point of purchase — or shortly after — means customers can put up little to no cash to close the deals. Depending on the desirability of the asset, banks extend loans from half to nearly 100% of its value. Borrowers can either draw on another line of credit, pledge more collateral, or use cash to cover the rest of the purchase. For rich individuals whose assets are tied up in stock, real estate, and other assets subject to capital gains taxes, the move is a no-brainer. In California, for instance, capital gains taxes can total nearly 40%, whereas interest rates are near historic lows.
In other words, rich people aren’t spending much on these planet-sickening bathtub toys, but money is changing hands nonetheless. The big boat business is booming, and Gabe Newell – a big boat connoisseur – has decided to gamble some of his untold billions on what is, in all likelihood, a pretty safe bet.
But hey, at least good guy Gabe is chill about AI, right? Ah, well. Nevertheless.
Correction 8/10/25, 10:30am--A previous version of this post misspelled the name of the yacht company.
