OnlyFans owner Leonid Radvinsky has died at 43.
Glamtush reports that Leonid Radvinsky, the secretive billionaire owner of OnlyFans died of cancer, at 43, the company said on Monday.
Radvinsky was known for reshaping the porn industry using a subscription model, after he bought Fenix International, the parent company of OnlyFans, from the platform’s British founder Tim Stokely in 2018. He served as a director on Fenix’s board and was its majority shareholder.
The Ukrainian-American entrepreneur is credited for turning OnlyFans from a platform that avoided explicit content, to one known for its adult content with more than 300 million users and over $1 billion in annual revenue, powered by erotic performers and celebrity influencers.
The company, which was founded by Tim Stokely had only 13 million users when Radvinsky purchased it in 2019. It jumped more than tenfold to 188 million users by 2021, in part thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, when many people sought original ways to make money from home.
The company gained attention in 2020, when celebrities, including rapper Cardi B and former Disney Channel actress Bella Thorne, joined the platform, while Beyoncé and Megan Thee Stallion mentioned OnlyFans in their song “Savage.”
In 2021, OnlyFans announced it would ban sexually explicit content, alienating much of its user base. Following severe backlash, the company decided to reverse the decision, which Stokely blamed on pressure from banks it partnered with.
OnlyFans was far from Radvinsky’s only foray into operating websites focused on adult content. According to Forbes, he had a rather shady start to his career at age 17, when he operated a number of websites promising “hacked” passwords to porn sites. A Forbes investigation in 2021 found some of these websites, including Password Universe, promised links offering thousands of links to rather disturbing content, like “illegal pre-teen passwords” or “the hottest bestiality site on the web,” among other porn content, though Forbes found no evidence these websites really linked to what they promised.
After graduating Northwestern, Radvinsky founded MyFreeCams, an adult webcam site that reportedly served more than five million customers by 2010.
Radvinsky’s early porn ventures sometimes ran into legal trouble, with him facing lawsuits from Amazon and Microsoft for allegedly spamming campaigns that used their names in faux promises for free money or porn links. MyFreeCams settled both cases out of court.
OnlyFans also saw controversy and lawsuits amid its rapid growth, including accusations the platform’s age restrictions could be circumvented. But OnlyFans told the BBC it takes violations of its age restrictions “very seriously” and uses “state-of-the-art technology together with human monitoring and review to prevent children under the age of 18 from sharing content on OnlyFans.”
Radvinsky’s death leaves questions about who will own the platform. His Fenix shares have been held in the LR Fenix Trust since 2024 and he had a net worth of about $4.7 billion, according to the Forbes real-time billionaires list.
According to a Reuters report in January, OnlyFans was exploring the sale of a majority stake to investment firm Architect Capital in a deal valuing the company at about $5.5 billion, including debt.
Besides Fenix, Radvinsky also ran Leo, a venture capital fund he founded in 2009 that focuses primarily on investments in technology companies.
