Pavel Durov has teamed up with AltraVita fertility clinic in Moscow, Russia, to offer free IVF to women under 38; but only if they use his sperm.
Durov, billionaire founder and CEO of the messaging app Telegram, claimed this year that he had already fathered over 100 children through sperm donation in 12 countries. He now wants to ‘open-source’ his DNA to make it easier for his biological children to find each other. Durov is offering to fund IVF for women in his home country, Russia, through AltraVita clinic in Moscow. AltraVita specifically reference on their website that treatment would be with Durov’s ‘donated’ sperm, and it appears that Dubrov does not intend to undertake legal or financial responsibility for any children conceived.
The AltraVita website describes this as a ‘one of a kind’ opportunity to undergo free IVF using sperm from ‘one of the most famous and successful entrepreneurs of our time.’ The clinic website read: ‘It is a very generous contribution to society from someone who wants to help those dreaming of becoming parents.’
The clinic does not provide any specific details about the screening or donation process for Durov’s sperm. According to AltraVita’s website, all sperm donors undergo medical and psychological examination in accordance with Ministry of Healthcare regulations, and all donor sperm is tested for infectious diseases including HIV.
In a post published on on his platform, Telegram, in July 2024, Durov said that when he first donated 15 years ago, ‘The boss of the clinic told me that “high quality donor material” was in short supply and that it was my civic duty to donate more sperm to anonymously help more couples.’
This is not the first example of a high-profile donor expressing an interest in having many biological children. In 2023, Dutch courts banned Jonathan Meijr from donating sperm, following claims that he fathered over 500 children. The story was covered in the Netflix documentary, ‘The Man with 1000 Kids’, which highlighted difficulties in tracking donors internationally.
Durov expressed his intention to encourage sperm donation more widely. He said in a Telegram post, ‘The shortage of healthy sperm has become an increasingly serious issue worldwide, and I’m proud that I did my part to alleviate it… I also want to destigmatise the whole notion of sperm donation and incentivise more healthy men to do it, so that families struggling to have kids can enjoy more options.’
Durov left Russia and became a French citizen in 2021, after refusing to comply with an investigation into the first social media site he founded, according to Forbes. He was arrested in France in August as part of an investigation into charges of enabling criminal activity on Telegram and is currently forbidden to leave the country.
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