Yuri Milner: saving physicists from Wall Street

Russian tech investor Yuri Milner is feared by many in Silicon Valley. But it's the universe he's got his eye on.

Russian tech investor Yuri Milner is generally acknowledged to have rewritten the investment rules of Silicon Valley, says Sarah Lacy on Reuters. He bet very big, very early, on companies including Facebook, Spotify, Zynga and Groupon. He is a man so driven by return on investment that even his wife describes him as "a robot". Yet clearly Milner has a "very different side": he's just spent $27m setting up a foundation for fundamental physicists, "with the aim of doing nothing more than advancing our knowledge of the universe".

Philanthropy is nothing new to Silicon Valley. Even so, this marks quite a turnaround for Milner. Having stormed onto the scene as an unknown entity in May 2009 with a whopping $200m "night raid" investment in Facebook, he swiftly emerged as "the most controversial money guy in the Valley sought-after, feared and derided in almost equal measure", says Wired.

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