What Is Yuri Milner Thinking?

Dirty Money, the Nasdaq Blues, and Larry David's Complaint

Welcome back to the Daily Courant, spotlighting everything new at Puck. Here's what's new in our world.

First up, Teddy Schleifer explores the uncomfortable questions haunting Silicon Valley billionaire Yuri Milner, one of the earliest major investors in Facebook, as his past financial ties to Russia come under wartime scrutiny in the present.

Plus, below the fold: Matt Belloni reveals why Seinfeld creator Larry David suddenly pulled his own HBO documentary on the eve of its premiere. Eriq Gardner examines the legal complexifier roiling Hollywood. And Julia Ioffe talks to a Ukrainian journalist turned politician turned resistance fighter about the looming battle for Kyiv.

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Yuri Milner’s Eastern Promises

Economic sanctions targeting Russia, and oligarch Alisher Usmanov, are raising new questions about Milner’s past financial partners. So far, he’s staying quiet.

THEODORE SCHLEIFER

What is Yuri Milner thinking? That’s the question I posed last week to Milner’s spokesman, after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and then again on Monday, after Western governments responded with crippling sanctions. Milner, after all, is easily among Silicon Valley’s most prominent Russians, having made billions of dollars as the force behind DST Global, the venture firm that placed historic bets on Facebook and Twitter, among other Bay Area landmarks. But it was Milner’s embattled friends that put him on my mind: The Russian provenance of DST’s early capital was supplied in large part by Alisher Usmanov, a Russian oligarch who made his fortune in metal and mining before teaming up with Milner in 2008.

The partnership worked out pretty well, for both of them. The Facebook investment in particular turned Yuri into Silicon Valley royalty, with first-name-only status on par with Jack or Sheryl, enabling him to drop $100 million in 2011 for the 25,000-square foot Chateau Loire in Palo Alto, setting a record at the time for the most expensive single-family home. Once a year, he plays M.C. alongside Mark Zuckerberg at the Breakthrough Prize award show, the closest thing this town has to the Met Gala.

Money. Romance. Tragedy. Deception. Hulu’s limited series “The Dropout,” the story of Elizabeth Holmes (Amanda Seyfried) and Theranos, is an unbelievable tale of ambition and fame gone terribly wrong. How did the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire lose it all in the blink of an eye?

But the last few days have made clear that shaking the past isn’t so easy. On Monday, the European Union added Usmanov to its list of sanctioned Russian oligarchs, as part of the West’s attempt to isolate and punish Vladimir Putin and his allies. And so there is no gotcha when I ask: What does Milner think about the invasion of Ukraine? It may be a tough question, given his fiduciary ties to both Russia and the U.S. But I can assure you that it’s a question that others in Silicon Valley are asking this week, too...

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