The founder and president of the application TelegramPavel Durov, announced this Monday that his messaging platform achieved a net profit for the first time in 2024, with a turnover of more than US$1 billion.
“As I predicted, 2024 turned out to be a very good year for Telegram. For the first time since the start of its monetization three years ago, Telegram has become profitable,” Durov announced on his Telegram channel.
The messaging platform, headquartered in the United Arab Emirates, claims to have 950 million users worldwide.
For a long time it has operated without advertising or paid services. But as of 2021 it adopted a monetization policywhich is mainly based on paid subscriptions that offer exclusive functionalities and the introduction of advertising.
Durov announced annual sales of more than $1 billion and more than $500 million in cash reserves, not including his cryptocurrency assets.
He also celebrated that the number of subscribers to the paid version of the application, Telegram Premium, has tripled, exceeding, according to him, “twelve million” users and the increase in advertising revenue.
The year 2024 was marked by a judicial setback for the person responsible for the messaging platform, who at the end of August was arrested and later indicted by two French judges for a litany of crimes related to organized crime.
The court reproached him for not having taken measures against the dissemination of criminal content on the messaging service. Durov was released under strict judicial control, which includes the obligation to post a bail of five million euros, report to the police twice a week and a ban on leaving French territory. The matter caused a great stir and Russia warned against “any political persecution.”
The 40-year-old billionaire, who has several nationalities (mainly French, Russian and Emirati), came out of his silence in mid-September, for the first time since his arrest.
In a message on Telegram, he said that he found it “surprising” that he was considered responsible for the content published by other people and considered the French approach “reckless.”
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
