Pavel Durov

Pavel Valeryevich Durov (Russian: Павел Валерьевич Дуров; born 10 October 1984) is a technology entrepreneur. He is best known as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Telegram.

Durov was born in the Soviet Union, where he co-founded the social networking site VKontakte (VK) in 2006. He was forced out of VK in 2014 following disputes with the company's new owners and increased pressure from Russian authorities, which also led him to leave the country. In 2013, he and his older brother, Nikolai Durov, developed Telegram, and in 2017, they moved to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where its headquarters are now located.

Durov was listed on Forbes's billionaires list in 2023, with an estimated net worth of $13 billion. His fortune is largely driven by his ownership of Telegram. As of 19 July 2025, Durov was ranked the 118th richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $17.1 billion, according to Forbes. In 2022, he was recognized by Forbes as the richest expat in the United Arab Emirates. In February 2023 Arabian Business named him the most powerful entrepreneur in Dubai. Durov publicly stands for Internet freedom and criticizes the establishment that tries to restrict it. Since 2021, he has held citizenship in Russia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, the United Arab Emirates, and France.

On 24 August 2024, Durov was arrested by French police on criminal charges relating to an alleged lack of content moderation on Telegram and refusal to work with police, which allegedly allowed the spread of criminal activities.

Early life and education

Durov was born on 10 October 1984 in Leningrad, then Soviet Union, into a Russian family. His father is Valery Durov, a professor of philology. Pavel Durov and his older brother Nikolai spent most of their childhood in Turin, Italy, where their father was employed.

Between 2002 and 2006, Durov studied English and Translation at Saint Petersburg State University, where his father worked.

Pavel Durov's grandfather Semyon Petrovich Tulyakov fought in World WarTemplate:NspII. He served in the 65th Infantry Division of the Soviet Red Army, participated in battles on the Leningrad Front at Krasnoborsky and Gatchinsky, and was wounded three times, receiving the Order of the Red Star, the Order of the Patriotic War 2nd degree, and on the 40th Victory Day, the Order of the Great Patriotic War 1st degree.

Durov's father Valery Semenovich Durov is a Doctor of Philological Sciences and the author of academic papers. Since 1992, he has been head of the Department of classical philology of the philological faculty of Saint Petersburg State University. In March 2022 Durov wrote that, "On my Mom's side, I trace my family line from Kyiv. Her maiden name is Ukrainian (Ivanenko), and to this day we have many relatives living in Ukraine."

Career

VK

During his university years, Durov created the highly popular forum spbgu.ru. In 2006, he met his former classmate Vyacheslav Mirilashvili in Saint Petersburg. Vyacheslav showed Durov the increasingly popular Facebook, after which the friends decided to create a new Russian social network. Lev Binzumovich Leviev, an Israeli classmate of Vyacheslav Mirilashivili, became the third co-founder. Durov became chief executive officer (CEO) and attracted his older brother Nikolai, a multiple winner of international math and programming competitions including the International Mathematical Olympiad, to develop the site.

Durov launched VKontakte for beta testing in September 2006. The following month, the domain name Vkontakte.ru was registered. The new project was incorporated on 19 January 2007 as a Russian private limited company. The user base reached 1 million in July 2007, and 10 million in April 2008. In December 2008 VK overtook rival Odnoklassniki as Russia's most popular social networking service. The company grew to a value of US$3 billion.

In 2011, he was involved in a standoff with the police in Saint Petersburg when the government demanded the removal of opposition politicians' pages after the 2011 election to the Duma; Durov posted a picture of a dog with its tongue out wearing a hoodie, and the police left after an hour when he did not answer the door.

In 2012, Durov publicly posted a picture of himself extending his middle finger and calling it his official response to Mail.ru Group's efforts to buy VK. In December 2013, Durov decided to sell his 12% to Ivan Tavrin (at that time 40% of the shares belonged to Mail.ru Group, and 48% to the United Capital Partners). Later, Tavrin resold these shares to Mail.ru Group.

Departure from VK

On 1 April 2014, Durov submitted his resignation to the VK board; at first there was confusion about the veracity of his resignation. However, Durov himself said it was an April Fool's Joke on 3 April 2014. His resignation message had signed off with "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish", a line from cult novel Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and the title of a later book in the series. A company spokesman said there was an official statement about his resignation that turned out to be a link to the Rick rolling internet meme.

On 16 April 2014, Durov publicly refused to hand over the personal data of Ukrainian protesters against pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych to Russia's Federal Security Service and to block Alexei Navalny's page on VK. Instead, he posted the relevant orders on his own VK page, saying that the requests were unlawful.

On 21 April 2014, Durov was dismissed as CEO of VK. The company said it was acting on his letter of resignation a month earlier that he failed to recall. Durov then said the company had been effectively taken over by Vladimir Putin's allies, suggesting his ousting was the result of both his refusal to hand over personal details of users to federal law enforcement and his refusal to hand over the personal details of people who were members of a VK group dedicated to the Euromaidan protest movement. Durov then left Russia and stated that he had "no plans to go back" and that "the country is incompatible with internet business at the moment". However, according to Russian investigative news outlet iStories, Durov returned to Russia more than 50 times between 2015 and 2021. Irina Bolgar, who lived with Durov during that period, told The New York Times that after several months outside Russia, Durov returned to the country with her despite his public disavowals, and the two resumed life together in St. Petersburg. A spokesman for Durov said that he had lived primarily outside Russia after 2013 but had never concealed returns to the country.

Telegram

On leaving Russia, he obtained Saint Kitts and Nevis citizenship by donating $250,000 to the country's Sugar Industry Diversification Foundation and secured $300 million in cash within Swiss banks. This allowed him to focus on creating his next company, Telegram, an encrypted messaging service. Telegram was briefly headquartered in Berlin and later moved to Dubai.

In January 2018, Durov announced that, in a bid to monetize the growing success of Telegram, he was launching the "Gram" cryptocurrency and the Telegram Open Network (TON) platform. It raised a total of $1.7 billion from investors. However, these ventures were halted by American regulator U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission which argued in court that Gram tokens bypassed U.S. financing laws and should return the money to investors.

In 2018, Russia attempted to block Telegram after the company refused to cooperate with Russian security services. A leaked letter by a Federal Security Service employee stated that the block was actually tied to the company's intention to launch the Telegram Open Network. During the attempted block period, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs continued to operate official channels on the app. The block order was lifted in 2020, after two years of block attempts, which the service reportedly evaded using domain fronting. The stated reason was Telegram agreeing to "counter terrorism and extremism" on the platform.

Durov said that Telegram became profitable for the first time in 2024, with total revenue over $1 billion.

In 2024, when announcing Telegram had over 1 billion active users, he criticised Meta-owned WhatsApp as "a cheap, watered-down imitation of Telegram" and accused the competitor of using lobbying and PR campaigns to slow down Telegram.

In September 2024, Irina Bolgar, who claims to be the mother of three of Durov's children (see below), publicly stated on Instagram that Telegram should be considered jointly acquired property, as the messenger was conceived and developed during their ten-year relationship and they discussed its development together in daily life. Although Bolgar and Durov were never officially married, she noted that some jurisdictions recognize de facto relationships as official marriages for the purposes of property disputes.