Tonia Samsonova is a serial entrepreneur with an extensive background in media and journalism. Beginning her career as a political journalist in Russia, she served as the Senior Politics and Society Editor for Slon.ru and hosted shows for Dozhd (TV Rain) and Echo of Moscow. In 2010, she was named a Davos Young Global Leader.

In 2013, Ms. Samsonova transitioned to London, founding The Question, a Q&A site boasting 20M MAU. She later successfully sold the platform to Yandex, a leading search engine company, for an 8-figure sum. Ms. Samsonova’s achievements were further acknowledged in 2018 when RBC Business magazine named her one of the top 20 Russian entrepreneurs under 35.

During her tenure at Yandex, Ms. Samsonova served as a key product leader, focusing on Search and accurate SERPs in particular. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, she assumed the role of head of the COVID-Response initiative, leading a team of over 200 engineers responsible for providing COVID-related information to an audience of 70 million daily users. Self-isolation ads and other material produced by Ms. Samsonova’s team received accolades, earning gold prizes at Eurobest, Epica, ADCE, and Red Apple, and securing a Cannes Lions shortlisting.

In 2022, Tonia quit Yandex and launched Exactly.ai with a mission to provide access to personal AI models to professional visual creators. Exactly.ai quickly gained prominence, earning recognition from Google as one of the top 15 European and Israeli AI startups within its first year of launch.

Tonia is a mother of four children.