Telegram founder's unique offer may cause controversy (Photo- Reuters)
Digital Desk, New Delhi. Telegram's billionaire founder Pavel Durov has promised to give an equal share of his $17 billion wealth to children born from sperm donation. Dubai-based 41-year-old Russian-born tech entrepreneur Pavel Durov, who is the founder of messaging app Telegram, has made a controversial announcement.
He has said that all biological children born from his sperm donation will have equal shares in his estimated $17 billion wealth, provided they can prove their relationship through DNA testing.
Durov has offered to cover the full cost of IVF treatment for women under the age of 37 using his donated sperm, the Wall Street Journal reports. The offer is available through the Moscow-based Ultravita Fertility Clinic, where Durov's frozen samples are kept.
The clinic ran a special marketing campaign in the summer of 2024, touting Durov's "biomaterial" as having "high genetic compatibility" and offering free IVF to unmarried women.
Durov revealed on his Telegram channel in July 2024 that he had fathered more than 100 biological children in at least 12 countries through sperm donation over the past 15 years. Additionally, he has six other children from three partners. He described it as a solution to the global problem of male infertility and declining sperm quality and said it was his "civic duty".
A former doctor at the clinic said that the women participating in the campaign were mostly well educated and healthy. To avoid legal complications, this facility is given only to unmarried women. "As long as they can prove they share DNA with me, they will get a share of my estate about 30 years after my death," Durov said in an interview.
This announcement has sparked debate over issues of morality, genetic superiority and inheritance. Durov also said that they will "open-source" their DNA in the future so that their children can find each other. According to Forbes, his net worth is currently worth $17.1 billion, which mainly comes from Telegram.