Tech & Business
Founders, CEOs and technologists with roots in the Russian world — from Google to Telegram to Ethereum.
Arkady Volozh
Co-founder of Yandex, Russia's answer to Google
Sergey Brin
Google co-founder who escaped Soviet antisemitism
Alexander Gerko
Russian quant trader who founded XTX Markets — one of the world's largest algorithmic trading firms
Alexander Kartveli
The Georgian émigré who armed the U.S. Air Force
Alexander Nix
Cambridge Analytica CEO whose Russian-connected data scandal shook global democracy
Alexander Poniatoff
Russian engineer who invented the videotape recorder and founded AMPEX
Alexander Seversky
Ace pilot who armed America's air war
Alexandr Wang
American fashion designer raised by parents who emigrated from the USSR
Alexey Milovidov
Russian creator of ClickHouse — the open-source database powering analytics at Cloudflare, Spotify and thousands of companies
Anastasia Michaeli
Russian-born Israeli model elected to the Knesset
Andrei Baronov
Russian co-founder of Veeam Software — one of the world's leading data protection companies
Andrew Filev
Russian-born founder of Wrike who built one of the world's leading work management platforms
Andrey Khusid
Perm-born entrepreneur who co-founded Miro, the world's leading visual collaboration platform
Arsen Tomsky
Russian founder of InDriver — the ride-hailing app born in Yakutia that challenged Uber globally
Assi Azar
Israeli TV host with Russian immigrant roots and leading LGBTQ+ activist
Bernard Marcus
Son of Russian immigrants who built retail's cathedral.
Carl Barât
The Libertines co-founder with Russian, French and Polish roots who defined British indie rock
Check Point Founders
Soviet-born founders who invented the commercial firewall and built the world's largest pure cybersecurity company
David Miliband
British Foreign Secretary turned global refugee CEO, grandson of a Russian-Jewish immigrant
David Yang
Yerevan-born entrepreneur who co-founded ABBYY and brought Russian AI to the world
Denis Sverdlov
Russian entrepreneur who founded Arrival — the electric vehicle startup that shook Detroit
Ed Miliband
Labour leader and climate champion whose grandfather fled Russia as a Jewish refugee
Ephraim Kishon
Hungarian-born satirist who fled the Holocaust to Israel and became the country's greatest humorist
Eugene Kaspersky
The Soviet-trained mind who made cybersecurity global
Gavin Rossdale
Bush frontman whose original family name was Rosenthal — Russian-Jewish roots on his father's side
Igor Sikorsky
Born in Kyiv, invented the helicopter and transformed modern aviation
Ilya Segalovich
Nizhny Novgorod-born co-founder of Yandex — the Russian internet giant
Ilya Sutskever
The Soviet-born mind reshaping artificial intelligence
Isaiah Berlin
Born in Riga, became Britain's greatest liberal philosopher and the master of the history of ideas
Jan Koum
From Soviet Kyiv to a $19B messaging empire
Leonid Radvinsky
Odessa-born tech entrepreneur who owns OnlyFans and built a $2 billion content empire
Mark Ronson
London-born producer with Russian-Lithuanian Jewish roots who gave Amy Winehouse Back to Black
Mark Adler
Canadian film composer with Polish-Russian Jewish roots who scored The Artist and Life of Pi
Max Levchin
PayPal co-founder who coded his way from Kyiv to Silicon Valley
Michael Stroukoff
Born in Yekaterinoslav — the aviation engineer who invented the assault glider and built Chase Aircraft
Mick Jones
The Clash guitarist whose mother fled Russian Jewish pogroms — co-wrote London Calling
Misha Zilberman
Moscow-born Israeli chess grandmaster — one of the strongest players in Israeli history
Morris Michtom
Born in Russia, invented the Teddy Bear — one of the most beloved toys in history
Nikolai Durov
Pavel Durov's brother — Leningrad mathematician who co-built VKontakte and Telegram's technology
Nikolay Storonsky
Dolgoprudny-born physicist who co-founded Revolut — Europe's most valuable fintech startup
Oleg Shardin
Russian-born co-founder of Miro — the collaborative whiteboard platform used by 60 million people
Pavel Durov
The Soviet-born dissident who built the world's fortress of free speech
Pete Doherty
Libertines co-frontman whose Russian roots come via maternal family lines and a teenage poetry prize trip to Russia
Philippe Kahn
Paris-born tech pioneer whose mother was a Russian Jewish violinist — invented the camera phone
Raphaël Glucksmann
French MEP and intellectual whose family fled Czernowitz — one of Europe's most prominent anti-Putin voices
Ratmir Timashev
Russian co-founder of Veeam Software — built one of the world's largest enterprise software companies
Reid Hoffman
LinkedIn founder and PayPal Mafia member with Eastern European Jewish roots
Roman Axelrod
Russian-born co-founder of Xpanceo — building the next generation of smart contact lens computing
Rustem Karimov
Russian-Tatar co-founder of 1Password — the world's most trusted password manager
Sam Gennawey
American author and urban planner with Russian-Lebanese roots who wrote the definitive books on Walt Disney
Serguei Beloussov
Leningrad-born co-founder of Acronis and Parallels — one of the most successful Russian tech entrepreneurs
Slava Rubin
Born in Minsk — co-founded Indiegogo and pioneered the global crowdfunding industry
Stepan Pachikov
Born in Azerbaijan — pioneered handwriting recognition software and co-founded Evernote
Sultan Saidov
Chechen-British entrepreneur building international technology ventures from London
Victoria Tennant
British actress with Russian grandfather — married Steve Martin and starred in LA Story
Vitalik Buterin
The Russian-born mind who reinvented money
Vitaly Pechersky
Vladimir Zworykin
Born in Murom — the father of television, who invented the iconoscope and kinescope
Yuri Izrailevsky
Oskar Hartmann
Russian-born serial entrepreneur who co-founded Westwing and KK&K — Germany's startup ecosystem connector
Felix Zandman
Survived the Holocaust hidden in a pit for 17 months — then built Vishay Intertechnology, one of the world's largest electronics companies
Abakar Saidov
Dagestani-born AI entrepreneur who co-founded Beamery — a $800M+ AI talent management platform
Arseniy Vershinin
Grew up in a small Siberian town, studied nuclear physics in Moscow — then co-founded Personio, Germany's $6B HR tech giant
Ildar Shar
Russian-born Toronto entrepreneur who co-founded StackAdapt — one of Canada's most valuable adtech companies
Dmitry Tokarev
Russian-born founder of Copper.co — one of the world's leading institutional crypto custodians
Evgeny Lebedev
Son of a KGB officer — owns the Evening Standard and The Independent, sits in the House of Lords
Andrey Andreev
Russian-born founder of Badoo who launched Bumble — the dating app that made women message first
Igor Bukhman
Russian-born co-founder of Playrix — one of the world's largest mobile gaming companies
Dmitry Bukhman
Co-founded Playrix with brother Igor — together they built one of the world's biggest mobile gaming empires
Alexander Tamas
Post-Soviet-born Silicon Valley tech investor — backed SpaceX and co-founded Vy Capital
Artem Milinchuk
Post-Soviet-born founder of FarmTogether — pioneering digital farmland investment for ultra-high-net-worth individuals