Telegram Founder Pavel Durov To Share $17bn Wealth Among 106 Children

Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has revealed plans to bequeath his estimated $17 billion fortune to his 106 biological children, but not until the year 2055.

In an interview published on Thursday by French magazine Le Point, the 40-year-old tech mogul said he recently finalised his will, placing a 30-year delay on access to the inheritance to encourage his children to become self-reliant.

“I wrote my will very recently. I decided that my children would not have access to my fortune until a period of thirty years has elapsed, starting from today,” Durov said.

He added, “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.”

Durov emphasised that all of his children, whether conceived naturally or through sperm donation, would be treated equally.

“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. 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,” he added.

The tech billionaire disclosed that six children were born through natural conception with three partners. At the same time, the remaining 100 were conceived via anonymous sperm donations across 12 countries over the last 15 years.

“Six of whom I am the official father, whom I had with three different partners. The others come from my anonymous donation. The clinic, where I started donating sperm fifteen years ago to help a friend, told me that more than 100 babies had been conceived this way in 12 countries,” he said.

Based on his current net worth, each child could inherit between $131 million and $161 million, according to estimates by Bloomberg and Forbes.