Born in 1964 in Guryev, Kazakh SSR (now Kazakhstan), Arkady Volozh is a serial entrepreneur, technology visionary, and the principal founder of Yandex, often called 'Russia's Google.' Raised in a Russian-Jewish family, his father was a petroleum geologist and his mother a music teacher. This blend of science and culture shaped his intellectual curiosity.

Volozh attended the Republican School of Physics and Mathematics and graduated from the Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas in 1986 with a degree in Applied Mathematics. This highly analytical background, combined with his move to Moscow in the final years of the Soviet Union, positioned him perfectly to recognize the opportunities presented by the collapse of state monopolies and the rise of personal computing. His entrepreneurial journey began immediately after graduation, initially importing PCs.

Arkady Volozh is a quintessential self-made tech pioneer. While in university, he started his first venture: an on-campus chain of profitable currency exchange booths—a high-risk, high-return business in the rapidly liberalizing Soviet economy. This early success provided seed capital for his first formal IT enterprises, which included CompTek International (a major distributor of networking equipment) and a Russian provider of wireless networking, InfiNet Wireless.

His true calling was search technology. Volozh began working on search algorithms in 1989, recognizing the unique complexity of the Russian language, with its morphology and non-structured information. In 1993, with fellow computer scientist Ilya Segalovich, he developed a search engine for “non-structured information with Russian morphology.” This technology was launched publicly in 1997 as Yandex (which stands for 'Yet Another Indexer'). Under Volozh’s decades of leadership as CEO, Yandex grew to dominate Russian-language search and became a massive, diversified tech ecosystem spanning ride-hailing, e-commerce, and autonomous driving, successfully executing an IPO in 2011 and securing Volozh's fortune.

Arkady Volozh’s social impact is monumental, stemming from his creation of a sophisticated digital infrastructure for the Russian-speaking world. Yandex provided open access to information, mapping services, and essential utilities (like ride-hailing) for millions, profoundly impacting education, commerce, and daily life.

His personal philanthropy often focuses on promoting science, technology, and supporting the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The Yandex company has a strong commitment to education through its internal academies. Volozh's ultimate legacy is the proof that Russia could produce a globally competitive, proprietary search algorithm and a technology ecosystem that rivals Silicon Valley in its breadth and influence.

Arkady Volozh maintains the quintessential look of a successful, intellectual technology CEO—smart casual, high-quality, and pragmatic. His attire is functional, favoring simple shirts, tailored trousers, and jackets, suitable for the fast-paced, product-focused environment of a tech giant's headquarters in Moscow or his current base outside Russia.

His lifestyle is defined by immense wealth and global mobility, backed by his Russian, Maltese, and Israeli citizenships. His luxury is the intellectual freedom to continuously build new technology companies (like Nebius Group). He is the father of six children, reflecting a strong personal commitment to his family, and his professional legacy is one of being the rare figure who successfully challenged global tech monopolies in the search engine space.