The billionaire founder of Telegram, , long ago offered to pay for the in vitro fertilization process for “medically eligible” – that is, attractive – women who were interested in having a baby with his sperm. The process had to be done in a fertility clinic in Moscow (Russia), and offered two benefits, in their eyes: solving the problem of someone who wants to be a mother and satisfying, at the same time, their desire to reproduce widely.
Now the diary reveals that the Russian tycoon has already contributed up to one hundred children to their particular fight against global infertility, since the summer of 2024, which is when the clinic opened on their initiative.
At conferences, social media and news sites, the clinic described Durov as having a “high genetic compatibility” and said it would pay for in vitro fertilization for women under 37 who wanted to use his highly sought-after sperm.
And banner on the clinic’s website, called AltraVita, it still advertises its “biomaterial” alongside a photo of the CEO and the Telegram logo.
“All the patients who came looked great, they were people with good academic training and very healthy,” declared a former doctor at the clinic to the aforementioned media, who examined several volunteers. He added that the participants had to be single to avoid legal complications. “They wanted to have a son from, well, a certain type of man. They considered that father figure to be the right one,” he summarizes.
“This effort adds to a biological lineage that Durov, now 41, resides in Dubai and is worth $17 billion, declared in a public post on Telegram that encompasses at least 100 children in at least 12 countries, not counting the other six children he conceived with three different mothers,” he says.
The Russian-born CEO stated in his July 2024 post that he began donating sperm around 2010. He first gave it to a friend trying to conceive, and then anonymously, to alleviate a shortage of “high-quality donor material.” Since last year, the system has even been protocolized. Although he had stopped donating years ago, he wrote, his frozen sperm was still available on AltraVita.
Durov has presented his sperm donations as an effort to help alleviate the shortage of healthy sperm and encourage other men to do the same. The program has taken on special relevance in Russia, which faces a persistent demographic crisis aggravated by emigration and the war in Ukraine. “The shortage of healthy sperm has become an increasingly serious problem around the world, and I am proud to have contributed to alleviating it,” Durov wrote in the 2024 post on Telegram. In his interview with the French magazine earlier this year, he attributed a “rapid drop in sperm concentration in men in many regions of the world” in part to plastic pollution, calling it a threat “to our survival.”
And what about the children she is having? “As long as they can prove that they share my DNA, one day, perhaps in 30 years, they will be entitled to a part of my estate after my death,” Durov declared last October. Durov has said he plans to publish his DNA open source so his biological children can find each other.
The billionaire joins a small group of some of the richest and most influential people on the planet who are pushing the boundaries of ethics and reproductive technology. Some use genetic testing and explore the splicing of genes to produce children with desired traits. Others, such as , speak of procreation as something necessary to compensate for declining population growth and as a way to show off to colonize the galaxy with their descendants.
His personal life
In his personal life, he WSJ explains that Durov leads a healthy lifestyle, avoiding alcohol and caffeine, and promoting exercise and getting a good night’s sleep.
Durov had his first two children with a girlfriend while he was still running VK, in 2009 and 2010. It was around this time that, he says, he began donating sperm to AltraVita.
He subsequently had three children, born in Russia between 2013 and 2017, with Irina Bolgar, a lawyer who now lives in Switzerland.
Currently, they are in dispute. Bolgar claimed to have been in a relationship with Durov for a decade. The relationship then worsened, she says, and in 2023 Durov cut off all financial support for her and her children, including terminating the lease on what had been their home in Geneva, after she refused to move with her children to Dubai, she says. That year, Bolgar also filed a criminal complaint in Switzerland against Durov, alleging that he had beaten his youngest son on five occasions. She declined to comment on the complaint.
Open process
In August 2024, the Telegram boss was indicted on several charges in France, but was placed awaiting trial, to come. He faces 12 serious charges, including complicity in the administration of an online platform to facilitate illicit transactions (such as drug trafficking and distribution of child sexual abuse material) and refusing to cooperate with judicial authorities.
These charges are part of an ongoing judicial investigation, but it is understood there is sufficient evidence to take the case to trial. After his initial arrest, he was released under strict conditions: pay bail of five million euros, remain on French territory (initially) and report periodically to the police.
If ultimately convicted of the charges, he could face up to 10 or even 20 years in prison, depending on the specific crimes.
The process remains open and the founder of Telegram denies the accusations, calling them absurd and defending that he cannot be responsible for the actions of users on his platform.
