Telegram's CEO will leave his multi-billion-dollar fortune to his 100-plus children

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has fathered more than 100 children, to whom he will leave his multi-billion-dollar fortune, he told the French magazine Le Point on Thursday.

The 40-year-old CEO said he only wrote his will recently, in which none of his children will receive any of his money until 30 years from now. “I want them to live like normal people, to build themselves up alone, to learn to trust themselves, to be able to create, not to be dependent on a bank account,” he said.

He has six children with three different partners, and more than 100 via sperm donation, in 12 countries. He says the will does not discern between any of them.

“They are all my children and will all have the same rights," he told the outlet. "I don't want them to tear each other apart after my death.”

Amid widespread concern about the inequality gap, Durov has chosen a rather personal form of wealth redistribution.

In a Telegram post last year, Durov said he first donated sperm 15 years ago to help a friend conceive. The head of the clinic told him he was “high-quality donor material” and told him it was his “civic duty to donate more sperm to anonymously help more couples.” Durov says he will “open-source my DNA so that my biological children can find each other more easily.”

His succession plan for Telegram is that it will become a non-profit foundation. “My goal is to ensure the platform's continuity,” he said. “I want it to continue existing independently, respectfully of privacy and freedom of expression."

Durov first made his fortune in 2013, when he sold his stake in the Russian equivalent of Facebook, VKontakte, and invested much of the proceeds in Bitcoin. He started Telegram that year with $200 million.

The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates his net worth at $13.9 billion, but Durov says he doesn’t draw a salary or dividends from his company. “Telegram is a source of expenses, not revenue,” he told Le Point, adding that he is the sole shareholder. A failed blockchain project, which was banned by the SEC, put the company in $2 billion of debt.

Telegram now has more than one billion monthly active users. It helped pioneer high-encryption messaging, beloved by privacy activists, but also popular with criminals. In 2024, Durov, an outspoken free-speech champion, was arrested in France on charges that Telegram was facilitating a variety of crimes, including child pornography, drug trafficking, and money laundering. “Just because criminals use our messaging service among many others doesn’t make those who run it criminals,” he told Le Point.