The new status symbols of the super-rich: from Mark Zuckerberg’s A.I. butlers to Dubai’s custom-built islands

Maltese Falcon super-yacht moored in St-Tropez? How Noughties. Jeff Koons and a regular table at Nobu? Far too obvious. Sometimes you have to feel sorry for the super-rich. They work all their life to accumulate an outrageous fortune — but there is always someone with more, a status symbol that little bit more ­outrageous. Still, they keep trying. Gone are the days when a pad in Knightsbridge, a gold-plated Lambo and a fleet of staff was enough to impress.

Thanks to the trans-Atlantic high-tech boom, today’s billionaires are younger and more tech-savvy, and their toys a lot more Jetsons-like. Transformational ‘experiences’ trump possessions — think green homes and portable islands, not mansions and country piles. Instead of a yacht, the flashest seamen sail drone-dodging super-subs. Then there’s the supersonic jet to acquire, the ancient forest to plant and the right schools to attend… It’s enough to exhaust anyone. If only someone would invent an A I robot to help sort it all out.

Oh wait, they already have.

The super-submarine

Migaloo’s Private Submersible Yachts offer everything an ultra-high-net-worth individual (UHNWI) would expect from a regular yacht — on-deck swimming pools, helipads, VIP suites — and a little something extra. If the seas become choppy, or a drone looms overhead, you can slip beneath the waves and out of sight. ‘Explore and travel with total privacy,’ promises the marketing material. The brochure makes no mention of any missile-launchers but it does proudly display a quote: ‘Perfect for any Bond villain.’

The electric supercar

Blinging Lamborghinis parked outside of Harrods are frankly embarrassing. Those in the know are buying up Teslas, electric supercars that offer increasingly high performance as well as the assurance that you are saving the world. The upcoming Model X SUV costs £72,280, can carry up to seven people with a top speed of 130mph — and has cool doors that lift up just like in Back To The Future.

The private island

The problem with a regular island is that it’s stuck with nature’s design. But what if you could dream up your own from scratch, a bit like, well, God? This is precisely what a company called Dutch Docklands promises with its customisable islands, Amillarah, in the Maldives. Prices start at £6.75m. ‘Buyers are able to customise the size, shape and style of their residence,’ promises Dan Conn, CEO of Christie’s International Real Estate, which is engineering the islands with Dutch Docklands. Further islands are planned off Dubai and Miami.

The elite educational establishment

Eton or Westminster may do for your average scion of British/Russian/Arabian/Nigerian wealth — but in Silicon Valley, there’s a widespread view that schools, whether public or private, simply don’t prepare children adequately for the demands of the global economy. Step in AltSchool, a Californian start-up that recently raised £100m investment from Founders Fund, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s foundation). This handful of ‘micro-schools’ are beta-testing their tech-heavy approach on real-life children in San Francisco and New York, from about £18,000 a year. But the really smart thing to do is start your own school. Elsewhere, billionaire Jeff Greene recently launched a private primary school in Palm Beach, Florida, while his neighbour Bill Koch spent $60m (£43m) on the Oxbridge Academy (no affiliation to Oxford or Cambridge) so his children could play polo. And Ark Academies, set up by the former partner of Elle Macpherson and Uma Thurman, ‘Arki’ Busson, are now thriving all over London.

The supersonic jet

Supersonic air travel is a possibility once more — at a price. Last year, the Aerion Corporation (funded by Texan billionaire Robert Bass and Airbus) took its first order for its £82m AS2 supersonic private jets. Designed to carry up to 12 passengers at one and a half times the speed of sound it will cut flight times from London to New York to less than three hours. The first 20 planes have been purchased on-spec by FlexJet, a company that leases part-ownership of business jets. If all goes to plan, they will be in service by 2023.

An enchanted forest

If time is money then what price is a millenium-old tree? In Spain, ancient olive trees have withstood the country’s turbulent history, and have attracted a rich cultural significance; now the globe’s wealthy have started to snap them up like garden furniture for as much as £30,000. The thick, gnarled species, which are more than 1,000 years old, have become a big hit as luxury ornaments for wealthy collectors from Europe to the US and the UAE. ‘I no longer need to get on a plane [to see them],’ one collector said, ‘I can stay at home and enjoy my olive trees. It’s better for the environment.’ Not everyone agrees — there’s a change.org petition to stop the practice, which has attracted more than 153,460 signatures. Even you can build your own bespoke forest. Companies such as Ruskins Trees will plant ready-matured heritage arbours for you. Choices include Yews, £35,000, American Sweet Gums, £25,000, and Scots Pines, £6,000.

The A. I. butler

Mark Zuckerberg’s 2016 New Year’s resolution stated that he would construct and program a robotic butler. ‘I’ll start teaching it to understand my voice to control everything in our home — music, lights, temperature and so on,’ he disclosed. And at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, Segway, Intel and the Chinese company Ninebot revealed a robot-butler that can answer your door (you can also take his head off and use him as a hoverboard). Zuckerberg’s vision can’t be far away.

The moon shot

During the Cold War, it was taken for granted that only superpowers could build spaceships (and also nuclear bombs). In 2010, Elon Musk’s SpaceX became the first private company to send a rocket into orbit and bring it safely home — and in 2012 it managed to send another rocket to the International Space Station. It now employs 4,000 people and has contracts to supply services to Nasa. SpaceX’s priorities are to make manned, reusable rockets that will reduce the cost of space flight enough to make the Moon the new Mustique. SpaceX boasts of ‘competitive pricing’ and ‘modest discounts’ for multi-launch. So while Nasa is, for the moment, the main client there’s no reason you or I couldn’t scrape together £60m for a Falcon Heavy, the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V, which took Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the Moon.

The kiteboard

Finally, one we can all take a chance at. Ever since Google’s founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, were photographed surfing with kites in 2003, kiteboarding has become the favoured sport of the future-minded UHNWI. A top-end kiteboard might cost about £2,000 but what’s harder to come by is entry into elite kiteboarding circles. Silicon Valley venture capitalist Bill Tai and pro-kiter Susanne Mai’s Mai-Tai Global festival is a gathering of 100 or so kite-mad techies in the Dominican Republic, Hawaii and Richard Branson’s Necker Island. The net worth of its inner circle has been estimated at £4.75bn. The idea is that by pitting yourself against 50mph winds you really learn something about each other and the world. Whether it’s just a load of hot air is up to you.

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