Leviathan

The largest yacht Oceanco has ever built, delivered to a gaming billionaire

Oceanco delivered Leviathan to Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve Corporation, on 12 November 2025, a date the yard's own press release confirms directly, after launching the 111-metre hull in August 2025 and running sea trials in the North Sea that October. Built under the project number Y722 at Oceanco's Alblasserdam yard in the Netherlands, she is described by the yard and by charter broker YachtCharterFleet as the largest yacht Oceanco has built by volume, surpassing the yard's own Kaos and Infinity, though Oceanco's sailing yacht Koru, built for Jeff Bezos, remains longer overall at 127 metres on a much smaller gross tonnage.

Within months of taking delivery, Newell went further than any previous Oceanco client: he bought the yard itself from the Barwani family, who had owned it for fifteen years and built Kaos, Bravo Eugenia and Koru under their stewardship, with Oceanco describing him publicly as a hands-on visionary rather than a financier. Oceanco Head of Design Gilles Vernhet noted the significance of the moment as reuniting two Oceanco-designed yachts under one owner, though this page could not independently confirm which second yacht he was referring to.

A hybrid drivetrain built to run silent at anchor for half a day

Leviathan runs on two ABB Azipod thrusters powered through a diesel-electric system backed by a battery bank of roughly 5.3 to 5.5 megawatt-hours, sources give both figures and this page cannot resolve which is exact, large enough that Oceanco Sales Director Bas Swanink says she can shut down every generator at anchor and run her house systems on batteries alone for up to ten hours. Top speed is 17.6 knots, cruise is 13 knots, and range is given as 6,500 nautical miles, figures consistent across every source checked, though the specific main engine make behind the electric system is named only once, as MTU, in Boat International's own directory listing, and could not be corroborated elsewhere.

Oceanco senior designer Patrick Casanova described noise and vibration damping as one of the most ambitious goals ever set for a yacht of this kind, and the yacht's captain, Alan Pike, is reported to have called the result remarkably quiet, with low noise and vibration even at full speed. Quantum MagLift and XT fin stabilizers are fitted per Oceanco's own press release, and the hull carries a custom Bolidt synthetic deck compound developed specifically for this yacht, chosen for heat dissipation and low maintenance rather than a stock product.

Oceanco Sales Director Bas Swanink says Leviathan can shut down every generator at anchor and run her entire house system on batteries alone for up to ten hours, the kind of hybrid capability usually associated with a research vessel rather than a private superyacht.

Rooms a beach club would normally hold, given to crew and science instead

Newell told Oceanco that the more the crew is involved in designing the spaces they operate in, the better the outcome, and the finished yacht gave traditionally guest-only decks to that idea directly: a communal dining hall seating guests and crew together, reported at roughly 54 to 56 people, replaces the formal saloon, and a beach-club deck instead holds a hospital, a laboratory, a dive centre and a 3D-printing workshop, tied to Newell's marine-research organisation Inkfish. A basketball hoop and a regulation beer-pong table sit on decks that would normally carry only guest lounging space, and interior designer Mark Berryman called the whole brief a challenge to convention.

Materials throughout were chosen specifically to cut crew workload rather than for show: honed stone, natural wool carpets, composite capping rails and bead-blasted stainless steel replace the polished handrails and varnished teak that need constant upkeep on a yacht this size, a detail Oceanco's own release frames as freeing crew time for guest experience rather than maintenance. The bridge-deck saloon that would normally be the formal reception room instead became a gaming lounge with fifteen stations, two full racing simulators, ceiling cameras and a projector for shared visual experiences, which Berryman separately called absolutely fantastic and doubles as a crew training and classroom space.

What the yacht actually holds, and where the published numbers disagree

Published guest and cabin figures for Leviathan genuinely disagree across otherwise credible outlets, from 12 guests in 6 cabins per Boat International's own superyacht directory to 26 guests in 13 staterooms per Megayacht News, with a third figure of 22 guests appearing on Wikipedia and a fourth of 22 guests in 11 suites elsewhere, and crew numbers reported anywhere from 33 to 43. That is not a rounding difference, it is four incompatible layouts, and the most likely explanation is that different outlets worked from different stages of the yacht's confidential deck plans rather than one outlet simply getting it wrong.

What is confirmed without dispute: an aft deck built around a roughly ten-metre pool with decks stepping down toward the water and a tri-fold beach club opening to the sea, a forward helipad, a submarine garage, a separate toy garage stocked with jet skis and spearfishing gear, and three tender or docking platforms. Beyond the confirmed dimensions and the design-brief detail above, a reader should treat any specific guest or cabin number found elsewhere as one outlet's account rather than an agreed fact, at least until Oceanco or Newell publishes a single authoritative figure.

What Leviathan cost, and what nobody involved has said

Neither Oceanco nor Gabe Newell has disclosed a purchase price for Leviathan, and third-party estimates conflict sharply between 400 million and 500 million dollars depending on the outlet, figures this page reports as unconfirmed press speculation rather than fact, since no named source inside the build or the ownership structure has put a number on the record. That silence is itself informative: Oceanco's own press materials, unusually detailed on design philosophy and crew quotes, name no figure at all, which is consistent with a private, non-brokered new-build rather than an oversight.

A commonly repeated claim that Leviathan carries around 280 miles of onboard cabling could not be verified against a primary source in this research, a competing figure converts to roughly 261 miles, and the two are close enough that one may simply be a rounding of the other, though neither could be confirmed directly. What is solid is the scale of the human effort behind the build: an engraved glass panel on the main staircase names everyone who worked on her, a figure Oceanco-linked sources give as close to 2,000 people and a later account puts nearer 3,000, itself a sign of how large a project this was even before a price tag is attached.

Für wen: An owner who wants the largest hybrid motor yacht Oceanco has built and a genuinely research-capable platform, hospital, laboratory, dive centre and submarine garage built in as standard, and who is buying into a one-off design brief rather than a production model, meaning even basic facts like guest capacity are not settled in public reporting and must be confirmed directly with the yard or the owner's representatives.