Billionaire and Valve boss Gabe Newell refitted one of his yachts into a 93-meter base for deep-sea diving
Oceanco will present Draak, the yacht owned by Valve boss Gabe Newell, at the FLIBS show in Fort Lauderdale, US, running from October 28 to November 1, 2026.
The 92.9-meter vessel recently debuted at the Monaco Yacht Show alongside Newell flagship Leviathan. After a major rebuild, the former luxury yacht has become a support ship for scientific research and underwater expeditions.
Draak has a complicated history. It was originally named Equanimity, and its value was estimated at $250 million when construction wrapped up in 2014. The yacht was linked to Malaysian financier Jho Low, a central figure in the 1MDB fund scandal. It was seized in 2018 and later sold to Genting Malaysia for about $126 million under the name Tranquility.
Draak was the first yacht designed and built under the Passenger Yacht Code (PYC). Newell bought it in September 2023 and renamed it Draak, which means "dragon" in Dutch.
The refit at the Oceanco yard in Zwijndrecht took about 2.5 years and cost more than $35 million. Newell has also managed to buy Oceanco itself – the yard has belonged to him since August 2025. The upgrade involved Life Cycle Support teams and Oceanco designers, representatives of owner YTMC, Y.CO and Inkfish, as well as the crews of Draak and Leviathan.
Draak now serves as a companion vessel to the 111-meter Leviathan, and both yachts are meant to work together in the Inkfish fleet. The organization collaborates with scientists studying extreme marine environments, and Newell funds it personally and describes the work as philanthropic.
Leviathan and Draak represent the second generation of our thinking about the community onboard and how we can optimize the vessels to serve them and achieve their goals. I've always found it useful to think about the individuals you're involved with and how your actions impact them. It's a funny way of talking about a yacht, and one of the ways Oceanco had to adapt to what I was asking for as an owner.
The same approach extends to crew hiring:
We're designing a program that is the best program for people for the long term – professionally, for their wellbeing and for their families. We're building something where people are going to be better off in multiple dimensions.
Crew members took part in every stage of the rebuild and influenced the layout, ergonomics, materials, and workflows. Studio Vedder refreshed the interior. The former main salon became a shared dining room, while the upper deck salon turned into the "Chef's Lab" for intimate dinners, menu development, and cook training. The yacht has an owner's cabin and eight guest cabins.
Gabe Newell:
One of my favorite spaces onboard is the communal mess, where we all eat. It's very much the heart of the vessel – always lively and buzzing, and just a fun place to be. It has the energy of a really good neighborhood café or bar.
The former beach club and spa were converted into a full dive center with a medical room and the first hyperbaric chamber on an Oceanco yacht. The six-person chamber was developed with Hytech-Pommec, and its built-in BIBS breathing system supports decompression on both oxygen and heliox, which opens the door to deeper dives.
To avoid cutting a new opening in the hull, the chamber was built to fit the existing passage, reduced in height, and brought aboard on special rails with only millimeters of clearance.
The helipad was removed from the upper deck to make room for an aft boat area. It now houses the dive boat Scylla, the tender Minotaur, a sporty Nautique Paragon, and two Ribeye rescue boats.
A 12.6-ton Van Driel crane with an 11 m reach and a dual C-davit system rated at 6.7 tons each, the largest Van Driel has ever produced, were installed to handle them. An extended swim platform also added just over a meter to the vessel length.
Draak is far from the only ship Newell owns. His fleet already includes:
the 111-meter Leviathan, built by Oceanco and launched in 2025
the roughly 80-meter yacht Rocinante
the Inkfish research vessels Hydra and Dagon
support vessels, including the converted floating hospital Dapple and Game Changer
Two more ships are under construction. Norway's Vard has laid the keel of the 100-meter research vessel RV6000 at its shipyard in Brăila, Romania. Inkfish has also ordered the 162-meter RV11000 from Vard, with delivery set for the first quarter of 2030. It will carry the largest battery ever installed on a ship, enough for 12 hours of silent submersible operations, and the contract of nearly €700 million is the biggest order in the yard history.
The vessel is designed to operate at depths of up to 11,000 m, which would allow it to reach Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench.
