Early Life
Arkady Yuryevich Volozh was born on February 11, 1964, in Guryev, Kazakh SSR, Soviet Union (now Atyrau, Kazakhstan) into a Russian-Jewish family. His father was a petroleum geologist, and his mother was a music teacher. He attended the Republican School of Physics and Mathematics in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and later studied applied mathematics at Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas in Moscow, graduating in 1986.
Rise to Success
Volozh's entrepreneurial journey began in 1989 with the co-founding of CompTek International, a major distributor of network and telecommunications equipment in Russia. He started working on search technology in 1989, which led to the establishment of Arkadia Company in 1990, developing search software. In 1997, Volozh co-founded Yandex, and became its CEO in 2000. Under his leadership, Yandex grew to become Russia's largest technology company and a significant player in the global internet landscape. The company went public on NASDAQ in 2011. Volozh stepped down from Yandex in June 2022 due to EU sanctions. In 2024, the company sold its Russian assets to local investors. Volozh currently is a founder CEO of Nebius Group, an AI-focused cloud platform.
Key Business Strategies
Key to Volozh's success was his focus on developing technology tailored to the Russian language and the needs of the Russian market. He pioneered the development of search technology and intelligent products and services powered by machine learning. His leadership was instrumental in Yandex's expansion into diverse internet services, including e-commerce, navigation, and autonomous vehicles.
Philanthropy
Volozh established the Yandex School of Data Analysis (YSDA) in 2007, a free master's level program in data science, which contributed to tech education in Russia.