One of the last pieces I wrote at Kotaku that I remember actually having fun with was a guide to the submarine and research vessels owned by Valve boss Gabe Newell. At the time it was important because his submarine, the DSV Bakunawa, was "the only manned submersible that could reach" the wreck of the Titan, the billionaire-killing submarine that infamously imploded in June 2023.
Three years later I wanted to revisit Newell's efforts for two reasons. One, I find it interesting--not commendable, just interesting--that in a world where most of the billionaire class seems intent on feeding us to machines while they wait out a coming apocalypse in bunkers, Valve's CEO is pouring a significant amount of his money into science boats.
And two, while you'd assume a man making billion after billion would be buying more yachts, in this case he's technically engaged in an act of de-yachting, because as Luxury Launches reports, Newell has recently taken what used to be one of the world's fanciest private ships and had it transformed at shipbuilding company Oceanco (which he owns) from bow to stern into a working support and research vessel, designed to accompany the flagship of his deep sea research company, Inkfish.
The yacht that once revolved around spa living, private leisure, and floating-palace indulgence has effectively become a highly specialized operational companion vessel for Gabe Newell’s 111-meter Oceanco flagship Leviathan. The shift is dramatic because this is not simply a cosmetic refit or a modernized interior refresh. Draak has moved from leisure-first to operations-first, with almost every major modification pointing toward expedition support, dive capability, logistics, and long-duration functionality at sea.
Some examples of what that actually entailed, as Super Yacht Times reports (turns out there's a whole ecosystem of websites for this stuff!), include:
The rebuild of Draak included the removal of her upper deck aft helideck to allow for additional space on her main deck aft. This allowed for the accommodation of a large tender deck equipped with heavy-duty C-davits, while a 12.6-tonne jib crane was integrated on the upper deck aft to support hoisting manoeuvres.
and
Her former beach club and spa area has been converted into a fully equipped dive centre with a decompression chamber, while the main deck saloon has been transformed into a large crew mess.
All of which has essentially left the world with one less yacht and one more deep sea science ship, which is now going to do a lot of the grunt work that the bigger, more important Leviathan couldn't:
The yacht can carry additional crew, dive teams, tenders, specialists, technicians, and operational equipment while handling the wetter, louder, and more repetitive work that would otherwise interfere with life aboard Leviathan. She can stage dive operations ahead of the mothership, move gear between sites, support diver recovery, provide overflow accommodation, and reduce operational clutter aboard the primary vessel.
I find Inkfish really interesting; while very into taking 30% of the cut from every Steam purchase, Gabe Newell is also very into deep sea exploration and research, and is using his personal billions not to build data centres or help enable an authoritarian takeover of the United States (to my knowledge, anyway!) but to just do something he loves, in this case learning more about the world's oceans, and what's lurking around down there that we don't already know about.
I'm not pointing this out to glorify or congratulate him. There are no good billionaires, because nobody needs that much money, and Steam absolutely does not need to be taking such a huge cut from developers, especially smaller ones, that it's able to help fund a man getting a luxury superyacht retrofitted (by a ship-building company he owns!), for a marine research company he also owns.
But in 2026, on a scale of what billionaires are doing with their cash, this is at least as far away from the Elon Musk/Jeff Bezos/Peter Thiel side of the spectrum as you can get, outside of maybe doing what I would do with a few billion dollars to burn: buy a Premier League club.
