Lev Binzumovich Leviev

After graduating from university with honours in 2006, he moved to Saint Petersburg and co-founded VK.com with his friends, Yitzchak Mirilashvili and Pavel Durov.[4]

Lev and Vyacheslav invested tens of thousands of dollars in the project. The money was borrowed from Mirilashvili-Sr.[4] Leviev's share was 10%. From the moment of founding the company until 2012, he was the Chief Operating Officer of VK.com.[1]

Yuri Milner's Digital Sky Technologies fund was the company's first external investor. He bought a quarter of the network in 2007 and later merged DST's shareholdings into the Mail.Ru Group.[4] At the end of 2010, the holding increased its VK.com ownership stake by 7,5% - from 24,99% to 32,49%. In addition, the growing shareholder secured the option of buy another 7,5% of VK.com in 2011.

In July 2011, Mail.ru exercised the option and increased its shareholding to 39,99% which reduced the total share of the partners from 55,5% to 48,01% making Lev's share between 6% or 8%, according to various sources.[5]

Having learned about negotiations between his fellow co-founders and Alisher Usmanov in March 2012, Durov deleted their profiles id3 and id4. Leviev and Mirilashvili were planning to exit VK.com via an IPO for $3 bln, but at the end of March, Durov announced that the social network would not IPO for an undefined period.[6]

In April 2013, It is estimated that - Ilya Sherbovich investment fund, United Capital Partners, paid $840 mln for the partner's share,[7] assuming the whole network's worth at $1,75 bln. Lev would receive between $105–140 mln.

During the conflict between UCP and Pavel Durov, the fund considered Lev as a potential CEO of VK.com.[8]

In 2007, Lev Leviev and Vyacheslav Mirilashvili founded the Selectel data center network to provide for VK.com’s needs in processing and storing servers.[9]

By 2009, VK.com’s full server capacity was being managed by Selectel. In 2012, VK.com opened its own data center, but it still remains a client of Selectel.[3]

After selling his VK.com shares in September 2014, Lev Leviev assumed the role of CEO at Selectel.

In May 2014, it was reported that Selectel was investing ₽1 bln in a technopark in Saint Petersburg that would include a data center, offices and warehouses.[10]

On December 17, 2015, in the presence of Saint Petersburg governor, Georgi Poltavchenko, Leviev opened the largest data-centre in the North-West of Russia, “Tsvetochnaya 2”.[11]

By the end of 2016, Selectel was ranked the fourth largest IaaS provider for public and hybrid cloud in Russia (based on revenue).[12]

By 2017, the company was one of the largest IaaS providers in Russia, with a market share of 7%.[13] At the end of 2017, Lev stepped down from the CEO position, while remaining the Chairman of the board of directors.

In 2014, Lev co-founded BlockTrail with his long time friend, Boaz Bechar. Lev set up the holding company BlockCorp which made an initial investment of €500,000 in the BlockTrail project. The company developed a blockchain explorer, bitcoin transaction analytics tools and multi-platform bitcoin wallets.[14]

In 2016, the project was bought by Bitmain, a Chinese producer of equipment for mining bitcoins, and renamed BTC Wallet (btc.com).

Investments include:

• 2012 — Komitet, media holding company that operates three online media platforms - Tjournal.ru, Vc.ru, DTF.ru.
• 2014 — Coub (a Russian platform for making looped videos),[15][16] Livetex (a service for online communication), Ostrovok.ru (a Russian Online Travel Agency).[17]

Lev Leviev has also invested in international projects, such as:

• 2013 - Plarium, a game developer (acquired in 2017 by Aristocrat Leisure, an Australian producer of slot machines, for $500 mln);[18][19]
• 2015 – Optishell, a developer of a technology for identifying illegal filming in cinemas,[20] Moovit, an urban mobility data analytics company and free public transportation app,[21][22] Meta, an AI-powered research search engine (acquired in 2017 by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, for $25 million).[23]

In 2019, Lev Leviev's investment group, LVL1 Group, led a $19 million fundraising for Fnatic, a global eSports organization, joined by UK VC firm Beringea, Hong Kong based BlackPine, London based Unbound, and Joi Ito, Head of MIT Media Lab. Lev joined Fnatic's Board.[24][25]

Lev Leviev is an investor in several vintages of Yuri Milner's DST Global venture funds.

DST Global II acquired shares of Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb, Spotify, Alibaba and Xiaomi.[26]

Among the most publicized investments of DST Global IV are Ola Cabs, an Indian car-hailing service,[27] Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce platform,[28] and Slack, a corporate communication platform.[29]