Yuri Milner

Yuri Borisovich (Bentsionovich) Milner (Юрий Борисович (Бенционович) Мильнер; born 11 November 1961) is a Soviet-born Israeli entrepreneur, investor, physicist and scientist.

He is a co-founder and former chairperson of internet company Mail.Ru Group (now VK), and a founder of investment firm DST Global.

Through DST Global, Milner is an investor in Byju's, Facebook, Wish, and many other enterprises.

Born into a Jewish family on 11 November 1961, in Moscow, Yuri Milner was the second child of Soviet intellectuals.

His father, Bentsion Zakharovitch Milner, was Chief Deputy Director at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and was active in management and organization.

Betty Iosifovna Milner, Yuri's mother, worked at Moscow's state-run virological laboratory for disease control.

His older sister, eight years his senior, is an architect.

Milner studied theoretical physics at Moscow State University, graduating in 1985.

He went on to work at Lebedev Physical Institute, one of the institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

As a doctoral candidate in particle physics, Milner befriended Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov.

Sakharov's forward-co-founderthinking would later influence Milner's venture investment strategy.

In 1990, Milner became the first non-émigré from the Soviet Union to travel to the United States to receive a Master of Business Administration (MBA) at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

The press quoted him as saying that he made this decision after "being disappointed in myself as a physicist."

After graduating, Milner spent the first half of the 1990s at the World Bank in Washington, D.C as a Russian banking specialist focused on the development of private sector banking.

He has described his time at the World Bank as his "lost years", due to the privatization of government holdings during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin.

In the spring of 1995, Milner was appointed CEO of Alliance-Menatep, a stock brokerage company belonging to then oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

In December 1996, Milner worked as vice president and Head of Investment Management of Menatep Bank.

In February 1997 Milner was appointed the deputy chairperson and the head of the investment division of Menatep Bank but left this position in early 1998.

At the time, the market makers described him as "a well-known professional, who will bring the bank valuable experience in international financial institutions and transactions in the Russian investment market".

Milner became an Israeli citizen in 1999.

In 1999, after reading a review by Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker on the prospects for online businesses, Milner decided to create an Internet company.

He sought funding from his friend from Menatep days Gregory Finger, who at the time led the Russian branch of the US investment fund New Century Holding.

The fund agreed to invest $4.5 million with the proviso that Milner and Finger each personally invest $750,000.

Milner, Finger, and NCH created a new company, NetBridge.

In 2000, Milner became the president of Netbridge Services Ltd. (netBridge) – the company that was, "created as an Internet incubator and investment fund".

Netbridge succeeded in transferring a variety of U.S.-pioneered Internet business models to Russia, creating companies including the portal List.ru, online auction site Molotok.ru (based on eBay), free web-hosting Boom.ru (based on GeoCities), and online shop 24×7, using the formula of Amazon.com.

In February 2001, netBridge and Port.ru (which owned Mail.ru) announced a merger.

Milner became CEO of the new company named Mail.Ru (though the legal name Port.ru was also retained).

In 2005, he moved to Israel with his family.

In 2005, NCH shifted its focus from Russian Internet projects and Milner founded the investment fund Digital Sky Technologies (DST), becoming its chairperson in 2006.

In 2012, Milner's personal investments included a stake in 23andMe, Habito, and Planet Labs.

They relocated to California in 2014.

Milner has stated he has not been to Russia since the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea.

In August 2022, he renounced his Russian citizenship, reportedly in response to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine.

In 2017, he also had a minority stake in a real estate investments startup, Cadre.

Milner was a commencement speaker for the Wharton Business School's 2017 class.

In September 2020, the non-profit foundation operated by Milner and his wife, Julia, established the Friends of Israel MBA Fellowship at the Wharton School.

The $10 million fellowship supports more than 60 Israeli students at Wharton over 10 years.

Milner started his business career selling gray market DOS computers in the Soviet Union, which displeased his father.

When the USSR collapsed, he stopped selling computers in order to enroll at the Wharton School to earn an MBA.