Pavel Durov, the Russian-French billionaire and founder of messaging app Telegram, claims he’s fathered more than 100 children through sperm donation over the last 15 years.
The 40-year-old messaging mogul said in a recent interview that he’s planning to share his fortune with all of his children, even though he’s only the “official father” of six.
Speaking to the magazine Le Point, Durov said that he’s got children in over 12 countries now, who will all have a piece of his estimated £10.3bn fortune.
“The clinic, where I started donating sperm 15 years ago to help a friend, told me that more than 100 babies had been conceived this way in 12 countries,” he said.
“I want to specify that I make no difference between my children: there are those who were conceived naturally and those who come from my sperm donations,” he told the magazine.
Mr Durov added: “They are all my children and will all have the same rights! I don't want them to tear each other apart after my death.”
His remarks came in an extensive interview where he was quizzed on everything from his political aspirations to growing up in poverty. He also revealed that he’d recently written his will and that all of his children will have to wait 30 years before they have access to his fortune.
So, who exactly is the tech billionaire?
Who is Pavel Durov?
Once described as Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg, Durov made his name by founding the social media platform VK in October 2006.
However, he was made to leave the company in 2014 after refusing to comply with government demands to share details of protestors active on the site.
Telegram had already been launched in 2013 at this point, as part of a joint venture by Durov and his brother, Nikolai.
According to Telegram, Pavel supported the app “financially and ideologically while Nikolai's input is technological”.
Pavel continued to run Telegram from Dubai, working under dual citizenship from the UAE and France.
The Russian exile has been known for his eccentricities. While he doesn’t often speak to the media, Durov does share updates to his Telegram channel of more than 11 million subscribers.
For example, he revealed in 2019 that he was giving up consuming food as part of a radical diet thought to improve productivity and focus.
He’d also spoken previously about his sperm donor past.
“Fifteen years ago, a friend of mine approached me with a weird request,” he wrote last year. “He said that he and his wife couldn’t have kids due to a fertility issue and asked me to donate sperm at a clinic for them to have a baby.
“The boss of the clinic told me that ‘high-quality donor material’ was in short supply and that it was my civic duty to donate more sperm to anonymously help more couples...
“Fast forward to 2024, my past donating activity has helped over a hundred couples in 12 countries to have kids. Moreover, many years after I stopped being a donor, at least one IVF clinic still has my frozen sperm available for anonymous use by families who want to have kids.”
The tech billionaire added that he wants to “open-source” his DNA so that his biological children can connect with one another more easily.
What is Telegram?
Telegram is a social media and instant messaging app, that operates in a similar strain to WhatsApp and Signal.
As of 2025, it’s thought that Telegram has more than 1 billion active users, making it the world’s fourth most popular messaging service.
But the app has also faced some challenges in the past.
In 2024, Durov was arrested as part of an investigation into insufficient moderation on Telegram, with the belief that a lack of compliance has led to cyber and financial crimes being conducted on Telegram.
“It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform,” Telegram stated in a public statement posted to the company’s official channel on the Telegram app. “We’re awaiting a prompt resolution of this situation.”
The arrest of Durov sparked condemnation from privacy and free speech advocates, with National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden calling the action “an assault on the basic human rights of speech and association”.
Telegram maintains that, while there have been controversies associated with the app, “calls to violence” are explicitly forbidden and that any channels containing them are removed.
At an event in 2015, Durov stated that “the right for privacy is more important than our fear of bad things happening, like terrorism”.
