COMMENTARY: Russian billionaire spending $100M to search for aliens - Monitor
The Russian billionaire Yuri Milner's pledge of $100 million to the search for signals from outer space seems like an ideal opportunity to grumble about billionaires who fund idiosyncratic projects that may not do anyone (except the grant... Yet it could be argued that Milner and his Silicon Valley peers are making good use of money derived from inflated tech company valuations. Milner made headlines in Russia in 1995 when, as a junior associate of the ascending oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, he undertook the country's first hostile takeover. Milner was trying to make a point: He acted as though Russia was like other countries. When Milner surfaced in the U. S. in the 2000s, representing the venture capital firm Digital Sky Technologies, he looked as out of place as he had in Moscow in 1995. There, he seemed too American. Money with that kind of provenance inspires scorn, and the kinds of deals he pursued raised suspicion that they were intended to get rid of cash. Not so: Milner had a dream. According to Bloomberg Billionaires, Milner, with 12. 5 percent of DST, is now worth $3. 2 billion thanks to his tech investments, which include Spotify, AirBNB, the online retailer Zalando and the mobile phone maker Xiaomi — the industry's creme... Source: www.themonitor.com
