Telegram boss 'has more than 100 children'

Telegram founder Pavel Durov says he has more than 100 children despite being unmarried and preferring to live alone.

On his personal Telegram channel, Durov said this started 15 years ago, when he accepted an offer to donate sperm from a couple of friends who were having difficulty conceiving.

"I burst out laughing before realizing he was serious," the businessman born in 1984 said.

After arriving at the clinic, the doctor told him that high-quality donors were in short supply, and suggested that Durov donate more sperm to help other couples anonymously. "It sounded crazy, so I signed up," he said.

Pavel Durov shows off photos taken in Dubai on Instagram.

In a post this week, Durov said he had stopped donating sperm for years, but had just received news that he had helped more than 100 couples in 12 countries have children. In addition, an IVF clinic still had the businessman’s frozen, unused sperm.

Durov said that after receiving the information, he planned to make his DNA information public so that his children could find each other more easily. "Of course there are risks, but I do not regret donating," he wrote.

Durov was born in 1984 in Russia and currently lives in the UAE. He was the founder of the social network VK before founding Telegram, a platform that now has more than a billion users. According to Forbes , his fortune is about 15.5 billion USD.

Another tech entrepreneur, Elon Musk, is also famous for his large family. Musk is said to have 12 children with three wives. He has frequently spoken out about the declining birth rate, calling it the biggest threat to human civilization. He has said he encourages his friends to have more children. When news of his twins with an employee named Zilis broke, Musk explained that he was “doing his best to help combat the population crisis.”