Charles Ardai (born 1969) is an entrepreneur, writer, and editor. He is best known as the founder and CEO of Juno, an Internet company, and more recently as the founder and editor of Hard Case Crime, a line of pulp-style paperback crime novels.

Ardai's writing has appeared in mystery magazines such as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, gaming magazines such as Computer Gaming World and Electronic Games , and anthologies such as Best Mysteries of the Year and The Year's Best Horror Stories. Ardai has also edited numerous short story collections such as The Return of the Black Widowers, Great Tales of Madness and the Macabre, and Futurecrime. His first novel, Little Girl Lost, was published in 2004. In 1993, Ardai was nominated for the Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America for the short story Nobody Wins.

Ardai also serves as a managing director of the D.E. Shaw group, in which capacity he is responsible for technology ventures such as Schrodinger, a leading developer of software for computational chemistry, and Attenuon, a pharmaceutical company developing a new generation of therapeutics for the treatment of cancer.

Ardai attended Columbia University, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1991.

External link: Juno.com, Hard Case Crime official site