VK.com
In 2006, he co-founded VK.com with his friends, Yitzchak Mirilashvili and Pavel Durov.[5]
Leviev and Vyacheslav invested tens of thousands of dollars in the project. The money was borrowed from Mirilashvili-Sr.[5] Leviev's share was 10%. From the moment of founding the company until 2012, he was the Chief Operating Officer of VK.com.[2]
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.[5] At the end of 2010, the holding increased its VK.com ownership stake by 7.5% - from 24.99% to 32.49%. Mail.ru Group secured the option to 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 Leviev's share between 6% or 8%, according to various sources.[6]
Having learned about negotiations between his fellow co-founders and Alisher Usmanov in March 2012, Durov deleted their profiles. 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.[7]
In April 2013, Ilya Sherbovich's investment fund, United Capital Partners, paid an estimated $840 mln for the partner's share.[8] Assuming a valuation of $1.75 bln for the entire network, Leviev would have received $105–140 mln.
During the conflict between UCP and Pavel Durov, the fund considered Leviev as a potential CEO of VK.com.[9]
Selectel
In 2007, Leviev and Vyacheslav Mirilashvili founded the Selectel data center network to provide for VK.com’s needs in processing and storing servers.[10]
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.[4]
After selling his VK.com shares in September 2014, 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.[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%.
Btc.com
In 2014, Leviev co-founded BlockTrail with his long time friend, Boaz Bechar. Leviev 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).
