YACHT BUYERS ARE GETTING YOUNGER, SAYS AZIMUT/BENETTI EXEC

In the rarefied world of luxury yacht construction and design, the Viareggio, Italy-based Azimut/Benetti Group ranks high on the list of storied and sought-after names. The company’s clients include multi-millionaires and billionaires globally, and boldfacers such as Bill Gates have chartered its watercrated.

The company comprises two brands: Azimut, which produces smaller yachts that range in length from 10 to 35 meters, and Benetti, a mega- and superyacht producer behind ships from 37 to more than 100 meters long. It’s known for its technological innovations, including the extensive use of carbon fiber as well as hybrid diesel-electric vessels. Prices for the yachts between both brands range from US$1 million to more than US$300 million. Azimut/Benetti has four shipyards, three in Italy and one in Brazil, with the largest in Livorno, in Italy’s Tuscany region.

Paolo Vitelli founded Azimut in 1969 and acquired Benetti in 1985 to form Azimut/Benetti Group. His daughter, Giovanna Vitelli, 48, leads the family-run enterprise today. She spoke with Penta recently about how demand for yachts has increased as of late, its changing customer base, and the amenities on ships that owners most want today.

Penta: Has the demand for your yachts changed over the last few years?

Giovanna Vitelli: Despite initial predictions, the pandemic significantly boosted the yacht industry due to unforeseen mobility restrictions. The desire for freedom led to a surge in demand, and immediately after the COVID-19 lockdowns, every available boat, regardless of size, was sold out. Today, the demand has normalized, but the perception of what a yacht can offer has changed. As a result, our orders stretch to 2028.

Who are your primary customers, and how have they evolved over time?

Owners are now trending 10 years younger than before; they are typically men in their 50s. They are still very wealthy and successful, but unlike the past, where yacht ownership may have primarily symbolized opulence, today’s owner seeks something deeper: a private space to share with family and friends, a floating home with all the personal comforts, to enjoy a closer connection with the sea.

Can you share the amenities your customers want most on their yachts and how they differ from the past?

We are seeing a growing shift toward a more relaxed lifestyle on board. Owners seek areas ideal for sharing with loved ones. They have a preference for longer stays at anchor and want amenities that provide a comfortable, at-home experience. Popular requests include large social bars, extensive wine cellars, full office spaces for remote work, spa facilities, larger storage for water toys, and gym areas. These features blend luxury with functionality.

What are some of the unusual amenities or other requests your customers have requested?

We’ve added unique features such as a wood-burning pizza oven and a flower refrigerator. We even recreated a copy of the Sistine Chapel fresco over the dining table on a Benetti yacht. Another had spectacular interiors made with Lalique glass.

Tell us about the design features of your yachts. What aesthetic do you favor?

Twenty years ago, we began seeking designers from the luxury residential, hospitality, and fashion sectors rather than just the yachting industry. This brought a contemporary twist to a traditionally conservative sector. Each designer infuses the yacht with its own soul, but all have a simple elegance. Our most recent collaboration was with Matteo Thun and Antonio Rodriguez, inventors of eco-resorts, with whom we explored new frontiers for eco-friendly materials on Azimut’s Seadeck motoryachts .

One design concept that has influenced the lifestyle on board is the Benetti Oasis Deck. Previously, the stern was high and closed, but now, a lowered stern opens to the sea, enhancing the onboard experience.

How does sustainability figure into your designs?

Sustainability has been a core principle for us for over 20 years, and we started investing early on in technology to reduce fuel consumption. This philosophy continues to drive our innovations. Today, almost our entire fleet offers hybrid technology.

The newly launched Azimut Seadeck 6 became the most efficient and sustainable yacht ever produced by our group. In fact, the Azimut Seadeck Series can reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by as much as 40% in one year of average use compared to traditional yachts of similar size.

Our next goal is to further optimize consumption and emissions from onboard systems, especially for larger boats that spend around 90% of their time at anchor.

Also, our company has an agreement with the energy company Eni to use HVOlution, a biofuel made entirely from renewable raw materials.

Can you explain the concept of shadow yachts and tell us if they’re becoming more prevalent?

Shadow yachts, also known as support yachts or shadow vessels, are auxiliary vessels that accompany a main superyacht, providing additional storage for water toys, helicopters, and vehicles, as well as housing extra crew and guests. Currently, they represent less than 1% of the market.

Where do you see the future of yachts going?

I expect demand to continue at a steady pace in the coming years, especially as more people view yachts as residences rather than just for short trips. We have customers who’ve bought large yachts who anchor them and live in them for several months a year. They might dock in Monaco for six months, for example, and go to the Caribbean for the rest of the year.

“Call us optimists. Call us dreamers. Call us whatever the hell you want, but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds. The future is for everyone.”

That ad copy is from the voice-over of a July Meta Platforms META -3.38%.

spot that’s been part of a public-relations blitz to position Meta as the humanist AI company. The message was undercut by the ad’s inclusion of David Bowie’s “Five Years,” a brooding 1972 song about an impending apocalypse. But this week CEO Mark Zuckerberg left no ambiguity, publishing a 6,500-word manifesto—about 10 times the length of this newsletter—with a title that echoed the ad: “The Future is for Everyone.”

That seems to be Meta’s new tagline. In light of sinking public opinion and the company’s thousands of lawsuits from states, school districts, parents, and users, Meta’s public relations have been defensive. This push represents a return to offense, with a chance to distinguish Meta’s approach to AI from other labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, or SpaceX SPCX +9.65%.

“It is surprising that the discourse from many developing AI is so filled with doom,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I do not understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs and much of humanity’s relevance would rush to build that future.”

Zuckerberg frames what sort of future we build with AI as the central issue of our time. “We believe that delivering superintelligence to everyone is the way to answer this question,” he says. “This has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where individuals can use this powerful new capability to reach their full potential, pursue their interests, and improve their lives and the world more than ever before.”

The flood of words belies the situation on the ground in mid-2026. Americans, at least, have a love-hate affair with social media. A November Pew Research Center poll reported that 71% of U.S. adults used Facebook, and 51% used Instagram. Worldwide, 3.6 billion people use at least one Meta app every day.

But in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in July and August, 61% of respondents said they wanted more government oversight of social media, and two-thirds supported laws to keep children under 16 years old off the platforms. When it comes to Meta in particular, in the 2026 Axios Harris 100, an annual poll about corporate reputation, Meta placed 96th out of 100. It’s only above two other social media companies, Chinese ultracheap retailer Temu, and Spirit Airlines, a defunct air carrier. Regarding ethics, Meta came in last, and it was only ahead of TikTok in trust.

The steady drip of headlines in the teen social media trials isn’t helping. Last week, Meta lost a judgment in New Mexico state court that raised their liability in that relatively small jurisdiction to nearly $1 billion dollars. On Wednesday, jury selection began for a federal case with four states suing Meta over addictive product design, and false marketing that said its platforms were safe for teenagers. In July, Meta claimed that the states are asking for a total of $1.4 trillion in damages, in addition to design changes in the apps. This is part of a multidistrict litigation, where thousands of federal trials with social media defendants are coordinated in Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ district courthouse in Oakland, Calif.

There is a separate such group of thousands of cases in California state court, mostly with individual plaintiffs. The steady drip of bad headlines from the courts will continue unless Meta decides to settle en masse.

Meanwhile, in the second quarter, Meta booked “$2.40 billion of charges related to legal proceedings,” according to its quarterly filing. That may be just the beginning.

Zuckerberg spent 6,500 words getting his utopian message out, but I can sum it up in two: Trust us. The evidence is that Meta has a long way to go to win back that trust.

YACHT BUYERS ARE GETTING YOUNGER, SAYS AZIMUT/BENETTI EXEC

Meta is betting on a human-first AI future, but growing legal battles and declining public trust are putting Mark Zuckerberg’s vision to the test.