Telegram’s billionaire founder, Pavel Durov, has offered to cover the full cost of IVF treatment for women under 38 who want to conceive using his sperm, it has emerged.
The Russian-born tech entrepreneur, 41, claims to have already fathered more than 100 children through sperm donation, in addition to six from three partners.
According to him, he saw his donations as his ‘civic duty’ to help tackle the shortage of ‘high quality donor material’ and to ‘destigmatise the whole notion of sperm donation’.
Durov, who is worth close to $17 billion, has also said that all of his children, regardless of how they were conceived, will one day inherit a share of his fortune.
He told the Le Fridman podcast: ‘As long as they can establish their shared DNA with me, someday maybe in 30 years from now, they will be entitled to a share of my estate after I’m gone.’
In a separate interview with French magazine Le Point, he said: ‘I make no difference between my children.’
Durov has publicly linked falling sperm counts worldwide to environmental factors, including pollution from plastics, and has said he is proud to contribute to addressing the issue.
Last year, dozens of women responded to an advertisement offering Durov’s sperm for free at a clinic in Moscow, according to the Wall Street Journal. At conferences and on social media, it was said that Durov had ‘high genetic compatibility’.
Pavel Durov in December last year. He offered to pay for the IVF treatment of women below the age of 37 who use his sperm
The advert also promised that he would pay for women under the age of 38 who were interested in using his ‘high-demand’ sperm.
Although he no longer donates sperm directly, samples from his earlier donations remain stored at the Altravita Clinic.
In a Telegram post in July 2024, Durov confirmed that the sperm is ‘still available’.
To avoid legal complications, access to the samples is restricted, and only unmarried women aged 37 or younger are eligible to use them, according to the clinic.
The embryos offered are screened to ensure they are free from genetic disorders and are primarily made available to wealthy Russian and international clients.
Sergei Yakovenko, director of the Moscow-based Altravita fertility clinic and a friend of Durov, is said to have told him that sharing strong genetic material could be seen as a social responsibility at a time when male infertility is on the rise.
Durov has said his sperm donation began in 2010 when he agreed to help a friend who was struggling to have children.
He later continued donating after being told by fertility specialists that there was a shortage.
In a post on Telegram last year, he said: ‘My past donating activities has helped over a hundred couples in 12 countries to have kids.’ He also announced his plans to ‘open-source’ his DNA so his biological children can easily locate each other.
He added: ‘Of course there are risks, but I don’t regret having been a donor. The shortage of healthy sperm has become an increasingly serious issue worldwide, and I’m proud that I did my part to help alleviate it.’
Speaking about the women who responded to the clinic’s advert, a former doctor who worked there said: ‘The patients who came, they all looked great, were well-educated and very healthy.
Doctors described his sperm as in ‘high-demand’. The businessman has claimed he has fathered 100 hundred children and vowed they can all get a share of his fortune
Durev with Irina Bolgar, who he shares three children with
‘They wanted to have a child from, well, a certain kind of man. They saw that kind of father figure as the right one.’
He said Durov was not involved in the selection of the women who would be able to use his sperm and added: ‘Suddenly here’s a chance: It’s paid for, and the donor is someone so successful, intelligent and handsome.’
Durev first fathered two children with a girlfriend, before going on to welcome three more with Irina Bolgar, a human rights lawyer who lives in Switzerland.
According to reports, the pair are currently locked in a legal dispute, where she claims that in 2023, he cut off all financial support to her and her children.
According to the WSJ, she also filed a criminal complaint alleging he hit the youngest of their kids on five different occasions. A spokesperson for Durov has denied the allegations.
Durov launched Telegram in 2013 after previously creating Russia’s social media platform VK.
Telegram now has more than one billion active users worldwide and has become one of the most influential messaging platforms globally.
He is currently in a relationship with online influencer Juli Vavilova, who revealed that she suffered a miscarriage in 2024.