Yuri Milner
Yuri Borisovich 'Milner' is a Soviet-born, Israeli entrepreneur, investor, physicist and scientist. He is a co-founder and former chairperson of internet company Mail.Ru Group, and a founder of investment firm DST Global.
Early life
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. In 1985, he graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Lomonosov University. He then worked at the Lebedev Physical Institute in the field of theoretical physics under the supervision of future Nobel laureate Vitaly Ginzburg.Milner became an Israeli citizen in 1999. In 2005, he moved to Israel with his family. 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.
Education
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 co-founder 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 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." Milner was a commencement speaker for the Wharton Business School's 2017 class.
Business career
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.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".
Russian Internet investments
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. – 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, free web-hosting Boom.ru, and online shop 24×7, using the formula of Amazon.com.In February 2001, netBridge and Port.ru announced a merger. Milner became CEO of the new company named Mail.Ru.
In 2005, NCH shifted its focus from Russian Internet projects and Milner founded the investment fund Digital Sky Technologies, becoming its chairperson in 2006. A meeting through mutual friends resulted in Alisher Usmanov becoming a shareholder of Digital Sky Technologies in 2008. On 16 September 2010, Digital Sky Technologies changed its name to "Mail.ru Group".
In 2010, Mail.ru Group completed successful initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange with market valuation of $5.6 billion.
In March 2012, Milner stepped down from the role of chairperson of Mail.ru and from the board of directors. Dmitry Grishin was elected to the board and appointed as chairperson while retaining his CEO position. There were no other changes to management or to the board.
Post Mail.ru Group's IPO, DST is the sole vehicle for further international investments. The company is now fully independent of Mail.ru Group.
From May 2009 to January 2012, Milner was a member of the Commission on Modernization established by Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian President from 2008 to 2012.
Technology investments
In January 2009, while in Palo Alto, Milner became acquainted with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The meeting led to an agreement on 26 May 2009 under which DST bought a 1.96% stake in Facebook for $200 million.On 16 September 2010, Digital Sky Technologies changed its name to "Mail.ru Group". The group's portfolio included Mail.ru, Odnoklassniki.ru, ICQ, a minority stake in the social network VKontakte, online payments service OSMP.ru, e‑Port, as well as some other Russian assets. Milner's commercial interests in Facebook, Zynga, and Groupon were transferred to DST Global. Milner became the CEO of DST Global and the chairperson of the board of directors of Mail.ru Group. In November 2010, Mail.ru Group held its offering on the London Stock Exchange. In March 2012, Milner stepped down from the role of chairperson of Mail.ru and from the board of directors.
On 5 November 2017, The New York Times reported that Milner had strong Kremlin backing for his investments in Facebook and Twitter. His companies sold these holdings two years before that report was made public however, Milner denied any allegation he was working with Russia to turn social media against US Democracy in his open letter published in ReCode.
Altos Labs
In September 2021, an investment vehicle held for the benefit of the Breakthrough Foundation, co-founded by Yuri and Julia Milner, which supports existing and future philanthropic projects in fundamental sciences, invested in Altos Labs together with Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. Altos Labs is a funded biotechnology company dedicated to harnessing cellular reprogramming to develop longevity therapeutics. The company has recruited prominent scientists such as Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte, Steve Horvath, and Shinya Yamanaka. Milner reportedly originally considered pursuing reprogramming philanthropically, having already awarded three-year grants of $1 million a year to several geroscience researchers, but was convinced by former National Cancer Institute head Richard Klausner that a well-funded biotech company would lead to faster progress.Selected investments
- On 29 January 2011, Milner announced that he would invest $150,000 into each of the start‑up program participants selected by the incubator Y Combinator.
- In February 2014, it was announced that Milner had led a round of funding for cloud-graphics company, Otoy.
- In April 2016, online mortgage broker platform Habito launched with backing from Milner, amongst other fintech investors.
Forbes list controversy
Although it was widely reported in the media that those on the list "may be subject to sanctions", the CAATSA Report itself made clear that it "in no way should be interpreted to impose sanctions on those individuals or entities". It also specified that inclusion in the report "does not constitute the determination by any agency that any of those individuals or entities meet the criteria for designation under any sanctions program", and in no way indicates that "the U.S. Government has information about the individual's involvement in malign activities". Shortly after the list was released, it was reported that the Treasury Department had simply copied it from the Forbes' 2017 The World's Billionaires list: people on the Forbes list who had Russian heritage and a net worth of $1 billion or more had been indiscriminately included in the CAATSA Report.
In its response to a lawsuit asserting that the compilation of the list was "arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law", the Treasury Department has confirmed that it is "not challenging" the allegation that it had "simply republished" the Forbes billionaires list. In April 2020, in its annual Billionaire List Forbes magazine re-classified Yuri Milner from the Russian list to the Israeli list of billionaires, confirming his Israeli citizenship and close ties to the country.