Billionaires these days are either making headlines for their ever-increasing billions or the promises to give it all away. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has declared it, and so did Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, who proclaimed it the day his firstborn came into this world. These tech tycoons are not alone in this charitable sentiment. Even Steve Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, who inherited billions from the Apple co-founder, has said she is not interested in legacy wealth building.
A name that pops up for the opposite reasons is Pavel Durov, another billionaire worth $17 billion. The 41-year-old founder of Telegram, the encrypted messaging platform launched in 2013, aims to leave his entire fortune to his children. The son of a professor of philology, and with one sibling, his brother, who co-founded Telegram with him, Durov is the father of 106 children at the age of 41. He has six children with three ex-girlfriends whom he is raising, and the remaining 100 were conceived through sperm donations over the last 15 years in at least 12 countries, according to Fortune.
“I wrote my will very recently,” Durov told French publication Le Point in a recent interview. “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.”
It won’t make much difference to the high-net-worth individual known as Russia’s Zuckerberg, who created VKontakte, Russia’s biggest social network, at age 22. But it will surely prove life-changing for the children who may never even know their wealthy, enterprising biological father.
It stands out as a very unique inheritance plan in a world where wealthy businessmen cannot stop talking about giving most of their fortunes away. Bill Gates aims to leave his three children with only 1% of his net worth, which stands at around $106 billion, according to Forbes.
Similarly, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan pledged to donate 99% of their wealth during their lifetimes through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). Even by that rule, if Zuckerberg is worth $253 billion and gives away 99%, about $2.53 billion would still be left for his kids, and with time, that amount will likely grow, making them billionaires regardless.
As far as Durov and his descendants are concerned, his at least 106 children could each inherit around $160 million, more than many NBA supermax contracts, and more than most Hollywood lifetime earnings, just for being related to the Russian-born, French citizen who now resides in Dubai. Interestingly, the tycoon who has decided to leave millions to hundreds of his children doesn’t spend much on himself. In Dubai, he rents a five-bedroom waterfront villa in the ultra-exclusive Jumeirah Islands for nearly $1 million per year. Not one to splurge on jets, yachts, cars, or houses, the tech entrepreneur said he’d be happy to buy the stolen royal jewels from the high-profile heist at the Louvre in Paris and donate them to the Louvre Abu Dhabi instead. That may be best done before his kids turn 30 and the money goes out of his hands and into theirs.
The Durov descendants cannot touch the money for 30 years
Durov made his plans very clear. While he’s certainly doing something unexpected for all his offspring, he’s not one to be taken for a ride. “I decided that my children would not have access to my fortune until a period of 30 years has elapsed, starting from today,” he said. “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.”
It looks like he’s also taking a page from the billionaire playbook of raising independent children, but rewarding them once they’ve achieved something in life. Meanwhile, it stands as the largest single planned inheritance for donor-conceived children ever reported at this scale, an accomplishment for the father of them all.
