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Entrepreneur Oweis Zahran spotted wearing Richard Mille

American entrepreneur Oweis Zahran was recently photographed in distinguished company — alongside the Prince of Brunei — with a Richard Mille RM 65-01 Automatic Winding Split Seconds Chronograph secured to his wrist. The setting alone says something about the watch: the RM 65-01 is not a piece that turns up in ordinary rooms.

The Richard Mille RM 65-01 represents a genuine engineering milestone for the Le Brassus manufacture. It is the brand's first fully in-house chronograph movement, a development that took Richard Mille's internal teams years to complete and which the brand had long been building toward. The skeletonised automatic-winding calibre delivers hours, minutes, and a small seconds at 6 o'clock alongside a complete split-seconds chronograph architecture: a 30-minute counter sits at 3 o'clock and a 12-hour counter at 9 o'clock. A function selector allows the wearer to toggle between winding, neutral, and hand-setting modes — a hallmark of Richard Mille's engineering philosophy. The variable-geometry rotor, adjustable to the wearer's activity level, and the rapid winding system round out a movement specification that is exceptional by any benchmark.

For collectors, the RM 65-01 occupies a singular position in the Richard Mille reference hierarchy. Prior to its introduction, the brand relied on modified base ebauches for its chronograph complications. The arrival of a proprietary split-seconds movement — one of the most mechanically demanding complications in watchmaking — confirmed Richard Mille's standing as a full-scale manufacture rather than an assembler. The split-seconds mechanism, with its additional column wheel and coupling clamps, demands tolerances that are punishing at any scale, and doubly so within Richard Mille's ultra-light case construction.

Oweis Zahran, known in entrepreneurial and luxury circles for his discerning taste in high horology, is no stranger to significant Richard Mille references. His appearance alongside Brunei royalty wearing the RM 65-01 is consistent with the piece's positioning at the very top of the brand's sporting complications tier.

At a retail price of $300,000, the Richard Mille RM 65-01 is already a serious acquisition. On the secondary market, however, demand has pushed valuations well beyond $700,000 — a premium that reflects both the technical achievement the reference represents and the constrained supply that defines Richard Mille's production strategy across its most complex references.