Ex-Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold told Jeffrey Epstein he hosted Putin’s wife and daughter on his superyacht
Jeffrey Epstein’s interest in Vladimir Putin is well documented in the files released by the U.S. Justice Department in late January. Now, Meduza has uncovered another curious connection between the convicted sex offender and the Russian president: in previously undisclosed emails with Epstein, former Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold said that he hosted Putin’s wife and daughter aboard his boat in 2010. The billionaire technologist, who has denied having a personal relationship with Epstein, is the owner of a $15-million superyacht. But the exchange about the Putin family raises more questions than answers.
On October 27, 2010, Jeffrey Epstein fired off a brief email to former Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold. It said, “did you have putin on your boat?”
Myyhrvold’s reply came later that same day. “His wife and daughter,” he wrote, signing the email “Nathan.”
Meduza unearthed this email exchange in the latest trove of documents from the U.S. Justice Department’s investigation into Epstein, the late financier and convicted sex offender who died while in jail in 2019.
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Other copies of these emails appear in the released files with various details redacted, including Myhrvold’s name, email address, and response. When the alleged boat excursion took place, and which of Putin’s daughters could have been on board, remains unknown. Why Epstein was interested in the visit is also unclear.
As Meduza reported previously, Vladimir Putin’s surname appears in more than a thousand documents from the latest Epstein files. Epstein discussed the possibility of meeting the Russian president in correspondence with numerous people. However, there is no evidence in the released documents that the two ever met.
A decades-long relationship — that Myhrvold denies
Nathan Myhrvold, 66, rose to prominence in the tech industry before branching out into patenting inventions, advancing nuclear energy, and culinary research.
In the early 1980s, Myhrvold completed a PhD in theoretical and mathematical physics at Princeton University and conducted postdoctoral research with Stephen Hawking at Cambridge University. He joined Microsoft in 1986, when Bill Gates’s company acquired the software start-up he had cofounded, Dynamical Systems Research Inc., for $1.5 million in stock.
Myhrvold went on to become Microsoft’s first chief technology officer, a position he held from 1996 until 2000. After leaving Microsoft, he cofounded Intellectual Ventures, an invention and investment firm he still leads as CEO. Today, he also sits on the board of TerraPower, a nuclear energy start-up led by Gates.
As The Seattle Times reported previously, the newly released Justice Department records reveal a connection between Myhrvold and Epstein dating back to at least 1996. According to the documents, the two exchanged emails and met regularly in Seattle and New York City from at least 2010 through 2018. However, Myhrvold has repeatedly denied (through a spokesperson) that he had a personal relationship with Epstein.
Epstein was convicted of offenses related to child prostitution in 2008 and indicted on child sex trafficking charges in 2019. He died in custody that year in an apparent suicide.
Many of the released messages between Epstein and Myhrvold concerned scheduling in-person meetings. According to The Seattle Times, emails show them discussing plans to meet in Seattle in August 2013. During an earlier visit to Seattle in July 2011, Epstein asked Myhrvold if they could meet with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. (Myhrvold was apparently unable to reach Allen.) Myhrvold also dined with Epstein at his residence in New York multiple times.
In November 2011, Epstein invited Myhrvold to his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands — a site that many of Epstein’s accusers have said was a base for his sex trafficking operations. As The Seattle Times reported:
Myhrvold emailed Epstein saying, “Just motored past your island (I’m on my boat), so I thought I would wish you happy thanksgiving!” Epstein replied, “Come visit, I am here.” Myhrvold said he had diving plans but could make it to the island that weekend. That Saturday, Myhrvold said he “Should be there by 4pm, and maybe a bit earlier.”
The newspaper notes that other messages were “peppered with vulgarities and innuendo,” suggesting a close relationship between the two men. For example, on November 23, 2013, Epstein wrote to Myhrvold to thank him for some books, joking that the “pistachio icecream [sic] didn’t make it.” Myhrvold replied, “pussy doesn’t FedEx well either! Some things you have to be there.”
The notorious birthday book compiled for Epstein in 2003 (three years before he was first arrested) also includes a letter and photos from Myhrvold, according to The Wall Street Journal. The message said the images were from a trip to Africa: “They seemed more appropriate than anything I could put in words,” WSJ quoted it as saying. The accompanying photos included “a monkey screaming, lions and zebras mating, and a zebra with its penis visible.” A spokeswoman for Myhrvold told WSJ he doesn’t remember the letter.
The Russia connection
The email exchange about Putin and his family is dated two years after Epstein’s first conviction. Epstein and Myhrvold were also in contact on October 25–26, 2010, the days immediately beforehand.
On October 25, Epstein scheduled a phone call with Myhrvold for the next day; another email suggests they planned to meet in New York the following month. On October 26, the two spoke by phone, and Myhrvold later emailed Epstein some excerpts from his forthcoming book. (Myhrvold’s five-volume cookbook, Modernist Cuisine, was published in 2011.)
Notably, both men share an earlier Russia connection. In fact, they may have crossed paths there in 1998. Photos posted by investor Esther Dyson on Flickr include time-stamped snapshots of both Myhrvold and Epstein taken during a trip to Russia in April of that year. However, Meduza found no pictures of the two men together in Dyson’s collection.
As reported by the Dossier Center, an investigative outlet, Myhrvold also came up in Epstein’s conversations with Sergei Belyakov, Russia’s former economic development minister. A graduate of the FSB Academy, Belyakov heads the foundation behind the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). In 2015, Epstein suggested Myhrvold to Belyakov as a potential guest for the forum and offered to arrange a meeting. However, there is no publicly available evidence that Myhrvold was invited to the SPIEF.
According to the Dossier Center, Epstein also offered to recruit other high-profile guests for the St. Petersburg forum, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and billionaire Thomas Pritzker. Belyakov was reportedly struggling to secure guests at the time, due to the sanctions imposed on Russia over the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
In a comment to The Seattle Times, a spokesperson for Myhrvold repeated a previous statement denying that he had a personal relationship with Epstein. “Mr. Myhrvold knew him from TED conferences and as a donor to basic scientific research,” the spokesperson said. “He regrets that he ever met him.”
Meduza was unable to find any other publicly available information connecting Myhrvold to Putin’s now ex-wife, Lyudmila Ocheretnaya (formerly Putina), or their daughters, Katerina Tikhonova and Maria Vorontsova.
However, information about Myhrvold’s boat is publicly available. According to open sources, he owns a 160-foot superyacht called the Teleost. Designed by De Voogt Naval Architects and built in 1998, the luxury ship is valued at $15 million and has an annual running cost of $1.5 million. The Teleost is also available for charter for $195,000 to $220,000 per week.
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