Wake · Issue No. 01 · Summer 2026

Rising Sun

David Geffen — sole owner since 2010 (half share from late 2006); actively cruising as of July 2026, anchored off Mallorca with Oprah Winfrey and Kris Jenner aboard.

Rising Sun is the rare gigayacht whose defining fact is buyer's remorse — someone else's. Larry Ellison commissioned her from Lürssen's Bremen sheds to a Jon Bannenberg design, then reportedly kept stretching her mid-build until she hit 138 metres, comfortably clear of Paul Allen's 126-metre Octopus. Mission accomplished, at a price: at 7,841 gross tons she was too long for Monaco, Antibes or Cannes, so the Oracle founder found himself anchored offshore among the tankers, ferrying guests in by tender to an interior he is said to have compared to walking through an empty mall. Ellison had built the biggest private yacht of her day and discovered he didn't much like living in a superlative.

Enter David Geffen, a man constitutionally incapable of that particular regret. The Asylum and Geffen Records founder, DreamWorks co-conspirator and most feared deal-closer in Hollywood took a half share in late 2006 and bought Ellison out entirely by 2010. Where Ellison saw an empty mall, Geffen saw the greatest green room ever floated: 82 rooms across multiple decks of glass and teak, a cinema, a wine cellar, a spa, and a basketball court on deck that doubles as the helipad. Four MTU diesels producing 36,000 kW will push all of it to 28 knots, though nobody aboard has ever been in a hurry.

What Geffen actually built was a court — the most exclusive salon in the world, admission by friendship only. She has never chartered and never will. The guest book does the bragging: in April 2017 the Obamas, Oprah Winfrey, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Hanks island-hopped French Polynesia aboard, lunching at Taha'a en route to Bora Bora while the former president worked on his memoirs. Paul McCartney, Leonardo DiCaprio and Diane Sawyer have all done their time on the aft deck. Forty-five crew keep the machine invisible.

Then came March 2020, and the single most infamous Instagram caption in yachting history. As the world locked down, Geffen posted a sunset from the Grenadines: "isolated in the Grenadines avoiding the virus," he wrote, hoping everybody was staying safe. Everybody was not, and said so. Meghan McCain called it shameful and grotesque; the internet piled on with rather less restraint. Within days Geffen's account went private, and Rising Sun became shorthand for pandemic-era tone-deafness. He never apologised, never explained, and never sold. That, too, is the Geffen method: the deal is done, the noise is not his problem.

Six years on, the noise has faded and the itinerary hasn't changed. She wintered in the Caribbean, crossed as she always does, and in early July 2026 dropped anchor off Mallorca — Oprah and Kris Jenner aboard, the tenders running, the Balearic season officially open. Valued today at around $400 million against a build cost reported north of $200 million, she remains what Ellison accidentally made and Geffen deliberately perfected: not the newest or the largest anymore, but still the boat whose gangway confers more status than any flag she could fly. Ellison built a monument and found it hollow. Geffen simply filled it with the right people — and turned an empty mall into the hardest room in the world to get into.

The record

• Ellison reportedly stretched her mid-build to 138m to eclipse Paul Allen's 126m Octopus — then found her too big to park anywhere that mattered.
• Too long for Monaco, Antibes or Cannes: she anchors offshore among the tankers and guests arrive by tender.
• The on-deck basketball court doubles as the helipad.
• April 2017: the Obamas, Oprah, Springsteen and Tom Hanks island-hopped French Polynesia aboard while Obama drafted his memoirs.
• Geffen's March 2020 'isolated in the Grenadines avoiding the virus' post drove his Instagram private within days — he never apologised and never sold.