Arkady Volozh

Arkady Yuryevich Volozh (born 11 February 1964) is a Kazakhstan-born Israeli technology entrepreneur and computer scientist, renowned for co-founding Yandex in 1997 and serving as its chief executive officer until 2024, during which time the company grew into Russia's dominant internet search and services provider, often dubbed the "Google of Russia."

Volozh's early career involved developing search technologies starting in 1989, leading to the establishment of companies like CompTek International and InfiNet Wireless before Yandex's inception with co-founder Ilya Segalovich, leveraging his background in computer science from the Institute of Control Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Under his leadership, Yandex expanded beyond search into e-commerce, ride-hailing, and cloud services, achieving a peak valuation of around $30 billion and significant market share in Russia.

Arkady Volozh was born on February 11, 1964, in Guryev (now Atyrau), Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, into a Jewish family. His father worked as an oil geologist, a profession involving technical exploration in the resource-rich but economically constrained Soviet periphery, while his mother was a music teacher. Both parents were Jewish, navigating the systemic limitations and occasional ethnic tensions faced by Soviet Jewish families during the Brezhnev era.