Laurene Powell Jobs’ Superyacht Collides With Mexican Billionaire’s Boat

A superyacht designed and commissioned by the late Steve Jobs was involved in a minor collision with another vessel off the coast of Naples last month, according to footage of the incident.

The video was taken and posted to social media on Wednesday by Ricardo Salinas Pliego, a businessman and the third-richest person in Mexico, who was standing on the deck of his own yacht, Lady Moura , when the collision occurred.

In the clip, the bow of Jobs’ 257-foot yacht, Venus , appears to drift into the side of 344-foot Lady Moura as the latter’s crew holler and whistle.

“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 Spanish. “The good thing is that nothing more a scratch resulted, but it’s a big scratch that’s going to cost a lot to fix.”

Venus , a minimalist luxury vessel, was worth $130 million when it was launched in October 2012, a year after Jobs’ death from pancreatic cancer. It is now owned by Laurene Powell Jobs, his widow, according to public records.

A spokesperson for Emerson Collective, an organization founded by Powell Jobs that represents her family, confirmed the July 22 crash to Business Insider . They said that Powell Jobs was not aboard when the incident occurred.

“No family was on board, only crew,” a statement given to superyacht outlet BOAT International read. “The wind changed very suddenly, picking up from a breeze to 55 knots over the course of a few minutes.”

The statement, which BOAT International attributed only to “a source close to the matter,” noted that both captains met immediately to discuss “minor repairs needed.”

Jobs and the French industrial designer Philippe Starck spent four years collaborating on Venus ’ high-tech design. Starck told Vanity Fair France in 2014 that “two madmen” had come together to design the boat.

“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,” he said. “We formed a single brain with four lobes.”

Debuting in 1990, Lady Moura most recently changed hands in 2021, with Salinas buying it for $125 million.

Read more at The Daily Beast.