Yuri Borisovich (Bentsionovich) Milner[4] (Russian: Юрий Борисович (Бенционович) Мильнер; born 11 November 1961)[5] is a Soviet-born[1] Israeli entrepreneur,[1][6] investor, physicist and scientist.

[7] He is a co-founder and former chairperson of internet company Mail.Ru Group (later VK),[8] and a founder of investment firm DST Global.

[9] Through DST Global, Milner is an investor in Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb, Spotify, Byju's, Flipkart, Wish, JD, Alibaba, Nu Bank, and many other enterprises.

[16] 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.

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

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

[19] 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

[27] 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.

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.

[29] In 2010, Mail.ru Group completed successful initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange with market valuation of $5.6 billion.

[36] On 5 November 2017, The New York Times reported that Milner had strong Kremlin backing for his investments in Facebook (over 8%) and Twitter (5%).

[11] His companies sold these holdings two years before that report was made public however,[11] Milner denied any allegation he was working with Russia to turn social media against US Democracy in his open letter published in ReCode.

[38] Among a small group of invited technology entrepreneurs and CEOs including Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Eric Schmidt (Google), and Hiroshi Mikitani (Rakuten), Yuri Milner participated in the G8 Summit in Deauville, France in May 2011, where they discussed the internet and the world economy.

[40] Altos Labs is a funded biotechnology company dedicated to harnessing cellular reprogramming to develop longevity therapeutics.

[40] 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.

[50] In July 2012, Yuri and Julia Milner established the Breakthrough Prize, joined the following year by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan, Anne Wojcicki and Mark Zuckerberg.

[51] There are also New Horizons awards in Physics and Mathematics for younger researchers who have already produced significant works, as well as Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prizes for women mathematicians who completed their PhD in the recent past.

The last ceremony took place at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, with the previous seven held at Hangar One (Mountain View, California).

[55] He announced the initiatives at the Royal Society in London, alongside Stephen Hawking, Martin Rees, Frank Drake, Geoff Marcy and Ann Druyan.

On 25 March 2020, the Milner Foundation, a non-profit foundation founded by Yuri and Julia Milner, announced $3 million donation to three Israeli institutions: Magen David Adom, the national emergency medical response organization, which is operating an innovative project to reduce the number of people coming to clinics; Tel Aviv University Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences, where it will support research efforts aiming to develop treatments for the virus; and Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Ichilov Hospital, where it will directly fund the intensive care department that is caring for COVID-19 patients.

[69] Yuri Milner in his open letter published by Calcalist wrote that "a significant fraction of these masks will go to organizations providing essential services, whose frontline workers are still required to do their jobs during the lockdown".

[70] The masks arrived to Ben Gurion Airport on 16 April 2020, on board of dedicated charted El Al "Jerusalem of Gold" Dreamliner plane and were distributed by Magen David Adom to its emergency services staff, as well as to a range of hospitals, government offices, and national institutions providing essential services to the public.

[76] In April 2022, the foundation established by Yuri and Julia Milner pledged $100 million to Tech for Refugees, a philanthropic initiative launched with Airbnb.org, Flexport.org, and Spotify.

[13] Milner believes that the Internet will eventually develop into a "global brain" – which is often described as an intelligent network of individuals and machines – functioning as a nervous system for the planet Earth.