Arkady Volozh

Arkady Yurievich Volozh was born on February 11, 1964, in Atyrau in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic and was raised mainly in Almaty, then the capital of Soviet Kazakhstan. His father was an oil geologist and his mother a music teacher; both were Jewish.⁠[1][2][2]

Volozh attended a special school for students gifted in mathematics in Almaty, where he became close friends with Ilya SegalovichIlya SegalovichIlya Segalovich (1964–2013) was a Russian software engineer and co-founder of Yandex, serving as its chief technology officer and an executive director from 2000. Together with his childhood classmate Arkady Volozh he developed Russian-language full-text search technology and named the search engine Yandex; he led the company’s early search technology and was long involved in children’s charity work.Open the full entry; he later recalled that they “sat at the same desk for four years.” In the 1980s both went to Moscow for university, and Volozh entered the Gubkin Institute of Oil and Gas, earning a degree in applied mathematics.⁠[2][2][2][3]

Volozh began working on search technology in 1989 and in 1990 founded Arkadia, a company developing search software; its early achievements included electronic search for patents, Russian classical literature and the Bible. He also co-founded several IT businesses, including the wireless networking equipment maker InfiNet Wireless and CompTek International, later one of Russia’s largest distributors of network and telecom equipment, where he served as CEO.⁠[3][3]

In 1993, while developing a search engine at Arkadia, Volozh and Segalovich named it Yandex (short for “yet another indexer”), and Volozh proposed replacing the first two letters with the Russian letter Я. The search engine went live in September 1997.⁠[4][4][2]

When the company Yandex was formally incorporated in 2000, Volozh left his post as CEO of CompTek International to become CEO and a director of Yandex, a position he held until 2022.⁠[3][3][5]

In 2003 Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page visited Volozh and Segalovich in Moscow and offered to buy Yandex for $100 million; the two decided to keep control of the company and declined.⁠[2][2]

As CEO, Volozh was responsible for company strategy and for building personal relationships with officials in and around the Kremlin; those relationships helped Yandex fend off an anticipated takeover attempt in 2008 by the metals oligarch Usmanov. Lev Gershenzon, a former head of Yandex News, recalled going to the presidential administration with Volozh several times and urging him, “If it’s really needed, let them come to you.”⁠[2][2][6]

Volozh and Segalovich were both politically liberal but acted differently: in 2011 Segalovich joined protests against the results of the State Duma elections, while Volozh did not. Gershenzon believed Volozh made “too many compromises” with the Kremlin; other former employees saw less of a distinction between the two, saying Volozh urged staff inside the company not to politicize Yandex.⁠[2][2][2][2]

In 2010 Volozh and Daniel Recanati invested $4.3 million in the Israeli facial recognition company Face.com, where Volozh also served on the board; the company was acquired by Facebook a year later. Volozh was also an early investor in the Turkish quick-commerce company Getir.⁠[7][5]

In 2011 Yandex listed on Nasdaq, raising $1.3 billion in what was then the largest IPO since Google’s.⁠[2]

In July 2013 co-founder Segalovich died. Volozh said Segalovich was “a lifelong friend” and that his death was a terrible loss for him personally and for Yandex.⁠[8]

After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Volozh decided to focus on developing the international business under Yandex’s Dutch company and formally immigrated to Israel, receiving citizenship under Israel’s Law of Return. He later wrote that he moved to Israel in 2014 to develop the company’s international projects.⁠[7][9]

To mark Yandex’s 20th anniversary, Putin visited the company’s Moscow headquarters at Volozh’s invitation. According to people close to Volozh, it was the only time the two met face to face. Several months before the visit, Volozh had told Wired UK: “I don’t have friction with the state. Just like I don’t have friction with the weather.”⁠[2][10][2]

After rumors in October 2018 that Sberbank planned to buy into Yandex sent its shares sharply lower, Volozh decided at an emergency meeting not to pursue the deal, and the company then began talks with the presidential administration on a new governance structure. Under the plan announced in November 2019, Volozh joined the board of the newly created Public Interest Foundation and said he would set up a family trust to hold his Class B shares and sign a two-year lock-up covering 95% of them, to avoid any abrupt change in the voting structure.⁠[6][11][11]

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, former Yandex news chief Gershenzon publicly criticized Volozh for remaining silent despite being responsible for the homepage news; by March 5, ten days into the war, Volozh had still made no public statement.⁠[2][2]

On June 3, 2022, the Council of the European Union adopted Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/878, adding Volozh as entry No. 1175 in Annex I to Regulation (EU) No 269/2014 on restrictive measures over actions undermining Ukraine’s territorial integrity. The listing recorded his nationality as Russian and Maltese; it stated that he was a leading businessperson in economic sectors providing a substantial source of revenue to the Russian government and, as founder and CEO of Yandex, was supporting the Russian government materially or financially, and that Yandex promoted state media and narratives in its search results and deranked and removed content critical of the Kremlin.⁠[1][1][1][1][12][1]

Volozh resigned that day as executive director and CEO of Yandex N.V. and from his board and executive positions at its international subsidiaries. He called the decision “misguided and ultimately counterproductive” but said he would give no voting instructions for the shares held by his family trust (45.3% of voting power and 8.6% of economic interest) while sanctions were in place. Yandex’s board called the sanctions against him “wholly unjust,” based on an inaccurate understanding of him and of Yandex, and said it would help him if he chose to appeal.⁠[13][13][13][12][12]

After the war began, many Yandex managers and developers came to Israel, and Volozh wrote to then–Israeli Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman and other officials asking for help bringing in engineers from Russia and Ukraine; the move ultimately did not take place.⁠[7][7]

In early August 2023 Volozh described himself on his personal website as “a Kazakhstan-born, Israeli tech entrepreneur, computer scientist, investor, and philanthropist,” barely mentioning his Russian background or Yandex’s Russian origins, which drew criticism from both pro-Kremlin figures and the opposition.⁠[14][14][15]

On August 10, 2023, Volozh issued a statement in English and Russian: “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is barbaric, and I am categorically against it.” He wrote that many people in Ukraine were his friends and relatives and that, although he had moved to Israel in 2014, he had to take his share of responsibility for the country’s actions; since the war began he had been focused on helping engineers who decided to leave Russia, a process that required discretion and gave reasons to stay silent: “While there will anyway be questions about the timing of my statement today, there should be no questions about its essence. I am against the war.”⁠[9][9][9][9][9]

The statement came 533 days after the invasion began, making Volozh the second major Russian businessman, after Oleg Tinkov, to condemn the war openly. A Kremlin official told The Moscow Times anonymously that Volozh had “long been trying to be sly,” not listening to official wishes regarding search results. Putin later called Volozh a “talented entrepreneur” and wished him “good health”; Kremlin spokesman Peskov called such people “traitors.”⁠[16][16][17][15][15][15]

In late August 2023 the Financial Times reported that Volozh had formally asked the EU to lift its sanctions against him. Shortly after his anti-war statement, the EU nevertheless extended its sanctions on him. A February 2024 DER SPIEGEL report quoted University of Innsbruck scholar Gerhard Mangott as saying the EU was “treading on thin ice” in the case; Swedish economist Anders Åslund called the reasons for the listing “poor and dubious” and sent a letter of protest to Brussels because the EU had cited his book in the listing.⁠[18][15][15][15][15]

On March 12, 2024, the Council of the European Union adopted Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/849, deleting entry No. 1175, Arkady Yurievich VOLOZH, among others, from Annex I to Regulation (EU) No 269/2014. A European Council spokesperson confirmed to WIRED that Volozh was one of three people whose sanctions were lifted that week.⁠[19][19][19][20]

After Yandex N.V. completed the sale of its Russian businesses in July 2024, the retained businesses outside Russia were launched on July 16 as Nebius Group, founded and led by Volozh and headquartered in Amsterdam. Volozh said the company had an opportunity to build the leading AI infrastructure player in Europe with multi-billion annual revenue potential; he also described Nebius as like a startup, “but it’s an unusually big one,” and said Nvidia was its cloud partner because Yandex had been one of Nvidia’s largest clients in Europe.⁠[21][21][22][22]

On August 15, 2024, shareholders approved Volozh’s appointment as an executive director and the company’s renaming as Nebius Group N.V.; he has served as executive director and CEO of Nebius Group since August 2024. As of March 31, 2026, Volozh beneficially held about 52% of Nebius’s voting power, making it a “controlled company” under Nasdaq rules.⁠[23][24][24]

Volozh dislikes being called an “oligarch” and insists on presenting himself as an entrepreneur who made his fortune in technology. As of October 2026 he lived in Tel Aviv, Israel, and held Israeli citizenship. He has also served on the board of Neurosteer, a U.S. brain-activity monitoring company.⁠[7][25][24]