A Russian Elon Musk with 100 biological children: Meet Pavel Durov
CNN
Pavel Durov is a lot of things to a lot of people. Programming prodigy. Billionaire entrepreneur. Kremlin stooge. Free-speech fighter. Biological father to at least 100 kids.
Pavel Durov is a lot of things to a lot of people. Programming prodigy. Billionaire entrepreneur. Kremlin stooge. Free-speech fighter. Biological father to at least 100 kids. Durov, the elusive founder of Telegram who was detained in France over the weekend, cuts the figure of a mysterious, globe-trotting tech bro with Mark Zuckerberg’s prodigiousness, Jack Dorsey’s bizarre lifestyle habits and Elon Musk’s libertarian streak – plus a similar obsession with pronatalism and fathering children. Durov said in July that he had fathered more than 100 children thanks to sperm donations he had made over the past 15 years. Worth an estimated $9.15 billion according to Bloomberg and armed with an array of passports and residences, Durov has for a decade lived a life without borders, a man on an often-shirtless journey to secure the freedom of communication from the prying eyes of governments, democratically elected or otherwise. Now, Durov’s legal trouble is drudging up an old debate, pitting Telegram’s end-to-end encryption, which keeps communications between users secure even from the company’s employees, against the security concerns of various governments and the European Union’s campaign to rein in big tech. Durov was born in 1984 in the Soviet Union but moved to Italy when he was a 4-year-old, the tech entrepreneur told right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson in a rare interview earlier this year. The family moved back to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, after Durov’s father received an offer to work at St. Petersburg State University. Durov said he and his older brother, Nikolai, were math prodigies from an early age. The elder Durov was the bigger star when the duo were children. Durov said his brother went on Italian TV to solve cubic equations in real time as a child and won repeated gold medals at the International Math Olympiad. The younger Durov was the best student at his school and competed locally.
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