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Pavel Durov photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images
for TechCrunch licensed under CC by 2.0
Attractive women started showing up in summer 2024 at a fertility clinic in southern Moscow in response to an unusual marketing campaign: free sperm.
The sperm belonged to Pavel Durov, billionaire founder of the messaging app Telegram.
At conferences, on social media and on news sites, the clinic described Durov as having “high genetic compatibility” and noted he would pay for in vitro fertilization for women under 37 who wanted to use his “in-demand” sperm.
A banner on the website of the clinic, called AltraVita, still advertises his “biomaterial” next to a photo of the CEO and a Telegram logo.
“The patients who came, they all looked great, were well-educated and very healthy,” said a former doctor at the clinic, who examined several volunteers, adding that participants had to be unmarried to avoid legal complications. “They wanted to have a child from, well, a certain kind of man. They saw that kind of father figure as the right one.”
The effort adds to a biological lineage that...