Pavel Durov was born in St. Petersburg in Soviet Russia.
The tech entrepreneur cofounded the encrypted messaging service Telegram with his brother Nikolai in 2013. The brothers were born into a family of intellectuals, according to a biography on the Digital-Life-Design Conference website. Durov spoke at the conference in January 2012.
Durov is now worth $17.1 billion, according to Forbes. Much of his fortune comes from Telegram, which he said hit 1 billion users in March 2025.
“Ahead of us stands WhatsApp — a cheap, watered-down imitation of Telegram,” Durov wrote in a post on his Telegram channel announcing the news. “For years, they’ve desperately tried to copy our innovations while burning billions on lobbying and PR campaigns to slow us down. They failed. Telegram grew, became profitable, and —unlike our competitor — retained its independence.”
2024 was a banner year for the platform, marking the first year it turned a profit. In a post on X in December, Durov said the platform ended the year with more than $1 billion in revenue and $500 million in cash reserves. He added that Telegram had paid a “meaningful share” of the $2 billion in debt it had accrued over the past four years by “taking advantage of favorable prices for the Telegram bonds.”
Telegram has raised about $2.4 billion in debt financing through several rounds of bond offerings between 2021 and 2024, the New York Times reported.
“I hold 100 % of the company. There are no external shareholders and thus no interference,” he told Le Point in June.
