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Telegram founder Pavel Durov said on July 29, 2024 that he had learned he has more than 100 biological children. He attributed them to sperm donation he began about 15 years earlier, not to personal relationships. The total and the country count are his own statements, and no independent source has verified them.
What Durov posted
On July 29, 2024, Durov wrote on his Telegram channel that he had just found out he has over 100 biological children. In English translation, as reproduced in contemporaneous reporting, the line reads: “I just found out I have over 100 biological kids.” The original message is Telegram post 339 on the Durov channel, and Le Monde linked to it in its coverage that day. Meduza also reported the statement the same day, in its July 29, 2024 report.
How, according to Durov, the children came about
The route Durov described is sperm donation. He said that about 15 years before the post, a friend who could not have children asked him to donate, and he agreed. He did not describe any of the children as conceived through a personal relationship, and the reporting does not suggest otherwise. Wording such as “fathered” on its own can imply conception through sex; the accounts describe a clinical donation process.
Durov also said a clinic director had told him donor material was in short supply and that donating was a civic duty. In the account Meduza reported, he called donation “my civic duty.” This is his characterization of what he was told. The sources do not identify the clinic or the director, and they do not present the remark as an independently verified statement.
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The numbers and what they rest on
Durov said his donor material had helped more than 100 couples in 12 countries become parents by 2024. Those two figures are the core of the claim, and both come from him. Neither TechCrunch, which summarized the post in an August 26, 2024 article, nor a later Associated Press summary, which still attributes the number to Durov, independently verifies the total. The TechCrunch piece characterized it as a claim made on Telegram, and the AP summary, dated July 29, 2026, does the same.
No published count by country, clinic or year was located in these accounts. The reporting does not name the 12 countries, so readers should not assume a specific list.
What is not established
- Whether the total of more than 100 children is accurate. It is Durov’s own figure.
- Which 12 countries are involved, or how many children are in each.
- The health histories, legal status, or contact arrangements of any donor-conceived people.
- How many of the children, or their parents, know of the claim.
Where the claim stands
The statement is a self-reported account from Durov, published on his own channel and repeated by news outlets with attribution. It establishes what he said he learned and how he described the route: repeated sperm donation at a friend’s request, stretching back about 15 years. It does not establish the total, the country breakdown, or the outcomes for the families involved. Coverage that presents the 100-plus figure as settled fact goes beyond the evidence.
Anyone who wants to check the wording can read the original post and the Meduza report, which gives the fuller account of his donation history.
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