Tech & Business
Founders, CEOs and technologists with roots in the Russian world — from Google to Telegram to Ethereum.
The modern technology world carries an outsized imprint from the Russian civilizational diaspora. Google was co-founded by Moscow-born Sergey Brin; WhatsApp by Kyiv-born Jan Koum; Telegram by the Durov brothers; Ethereum by Vitalik Buterin. The blend of world-class mathematical education and entrepreneurial migration produced founders and technologists across Silicon Valley and beyond. This category documents them.
Arkady Volozh
Co-founder of Yandex, Russia's answer to Google
Sergey Brin
Google co-founder who escaped Soviet antisemitism
Alexander Gerko
Soviet-born mathematician; founder of the algorithmic market maker XTX Markets
Alexander Kartveli
Aircraft designer born in Tiflis in 1896; chief engineer of Seversky and Republic Aviation — P-47 Thunderbolt, F-84 Thunderjet, F-105 Thunderchief
Alexander Nix
Cambridge Analytica CEO whose Russian-connected data scandal shook global democracy
Alexander Poniatoff
Engineer born in the Kazan Governorate in 1892; founder of Ampex, whose team built the first practical videotape recorder (1956)
Alexander Seversky
Aviator and aircraft maker born in Tiflis in 1894; founder of Seversky Aircraft (later Republic Aviation) and author of Victory Through Air Power
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
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 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
Ephraim Kishon
Budapest-born Israeli satirist, playwright and filmmaker who escaped a transport to Sobibor and emigrated to Israel in 1949
Eugene Kaspersky
Cybersecurity expert born in Novorossiysk in 1965; co-founder in 1997 and chief executive since 2007 of Kaspersky Lab
Gavin Rossdale
Bush frontman whose original family name was Rosenthal — Russian-Jewish roots on his father's side
Igor Sikorsky
Aviation pioneer born in Kiev; built the first four-engine aircraft and the first viable American helicopter
Ilya Segalovich
Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod)-born co-founder and CTO of Yandex
Ilya Sutskever
The Soviet-born mind reshaping artificial intelligence
Isaiah Berlin
Philosopher and historian of ideas, author of 'Two Concepts of Liberty'; born in Riga, a child witness of the Petrograd revolutions of 1917
Jan Koum
Co-founder of WhatsApp, born in Kyiv in 1976 and raised in Fastiv; emigrated to California at sixteen in 1992
Leonid Radvinsky
Odessa-born tech entrepreneur who owns OnlyFans and built a $2 billion content empire
Mark Ronson
London-born producer of Amy Winehouse's Back to Black; his Ashkenazi Jewish ancestors came from Austria, Lithuania and Russia
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
Brooklyn shopkeeper born in the Russian Empire who, with his wife Rose, made the first 'Teddy's bear' and founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company
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
Founder of VKontakte and Telegram, born in Leningrad in 1984; left Russia in 2014 and is based in Dubai
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
Ufa-born co-founder of Veeam Software and Aelita Software
Reid Hoffman
Entrepreneur and investor, co-founder of LinkedIn
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
Toronto entrepreneur, co-founder of StackAdapt and founder of FirstPrinciples
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
Vologda-born co-founder of the mobile game company Playrix
Dmitry Bukhman
Vologda-born co-founder, with his brother Igor, of the mobile games developer Playrix
Alexander Tamas
German investor, co-founder of Vy Capital and former partner at DST Global
Artem Milinchuk
Post-Soviet-born founder of FarmTogether — pioneering digital farmland investment for ultra-high-net-worth individuals
Hans-Holger Albrecht
Media executive who ran Deezer, born into the Knoop line
Robert Robinson
Jamaican-born toolmaker from Ford's Detroit plant who went to Stalingrad in 1930 and lived 44 years in the USSR; author of Black on Red