Reclusive OnlyFans Owner Leonid Radvinsky Reportedly In Talks To Sell For $8 Billion

In the world of internet business, there are a few deals that are whispered about with a kind of reverent awe: Facebook buying Instagram for $1 billion. Microsoft grabbing Minecraft for $2.5 billion. Google snapping up YouTube for $1.65 billion.

If the rumors are true, another one may be about to join that pantheon.

According to sources who spoke to Reuters, Leonid Radvinsky, the billionaire owner of OnlyFans, is in advanced talks to sell the adult content platform to a private investor group led by Forest Road for $8 billion. The deal could be finalized within weeks, though sources caution it's not yet guaranteed.

That $8 billion number is staggering. But it might actually be low.

OnlyFans generated $6.6 billion in gross revenue in 2023, with $649 million in net profit, all from a business that has no physical inventory, no storefronts, and no reliance on mainstream distribution channels. It pays out 80% of earnings directly to creators, and keeps 20% for itself, making it one of the cleanest, highest-margin platforms in internet history.

And Radvinsky? He owns 100% of it.

(Getty Images)

A Billionaire in the Shadows

If you've never heard of Leonid Radvinsky, that's by design. Despite owning one of the most profitable and controversial platforms on the web, Radvinsky has kept an extraordinarily low profile. His LinkedIn page doesn't mention OnlyFans. His only work experience is "President" of Leo.com.

He rarely gives interviews. He's virtually absent from social media. There's barely a photo of him online.

It was very tough to pick a photo to use in this article. The guy you see in the photo above is not Leonid. It's a guy named Charlie Sims who attended a "tea party" hosted by OnlyFans in February 2022.  The women (Frankie Sims, Demi Sims, Chloe Sims, and Georgia Shults), attending with Charlie, may or may not be OnlyFans creators. If they are, I wouldn't be surprised if they each make like $20 million a year.

Leonid Radvinsky acquired 75% of OnlyFans in 2018 from the platform's original founders, brothers Tim and Thomas Stokely. At the time, OnlyFans was a scrappy, adult-adjacent startup making a few million dollars a year. Radvinsky saw the potential and bet big.

Today, Radvinsky now operates OnlyFans through a UK-based holding company called Fenix International Ltd., and over the last four years alone, he's quietly paid himself $1.6 billion in dividends.

We know quite a bit about OnlyFans' financials because, as a UK-based company, Fenix is required to release annual statements. Those statements showed the following dividends paid to Radvinsky:

• $284 million in 2021
• $338 million in 2022
• $472 million in 2023

The company has yet to release its 2024 P&L, but let's say he paid himself $500 million. That would bring his four-year total to just under $1.6 billion.

For a man with no investors, no board, and no public scrutiny, that's a level of personal wealth extraction virtually unheard of.

A Pandemic Windfall

OnlyFans exploded during the early months of the COVID pandemic as both creators and fans flocked to the platform. As we see from the financial statement below, in 2019, the site earned $304 million. By 2023, that number had ballooned to $6.6 billion.

• 2019: $304 million
• 2020: $2.2 billion
• 2021: $4.8 billion
• 2022: $5.5 billion
• 2023: $6.6 billion

That growth has drawn suitors, but it's also made OnlyFans toxic for many mainstream institutions. Its ties to pornography, allegations of non-consensual content, and the ever-present specter of sex trafficking have scared off big banks, public companies, and traditional private equity. Apple still refuses to host the app in the App Store.

Which raises the question: who would buy it?

Forest Road's Second Try

Forest Road, the investment group reportedly leading the $8 billion bid, is no stranger to the company. Some of its executives were previously involved in a 2022 SPAC effort to take OnlyFans public. That deal never materialized, but the group appears to be back—and this time with a simpler plan: buy it outright.

Forest Road has previously backed media and digital ventures and acquired a majority stake in ACF Investment Bank in 2024 to expand its advisory reach. Buying OnlyFans would mark a bold—and risky—move into the adult creator economy.

To Sell or Not to Sell

But here's the thing: Leonid Radvinsky is under no pressure to sell.

He controls a business that throws off $500 million in cash each year, with no signs of slowing down. With that kind of annual dividend stream, a sale for $8 billion might be less enticing than simply holding and collecting.

Consider the following: If Leonid sold for $8 billion, that's a multiple of 12X profits (the company's profits of $649 million, not his $500 million dividend). That's less than half the multiple Meta trades at (~23x), well below Microsoft's (~33x), and dramatically lower than the 50x revenue multiple Adobe agreed to pay for Figma, a company that wasn't even profitable.

Even if Leonid simply held on to the business for another 10 years, assuming performance held, he would theoretically pay himself another $5 billion in dividends without having to sell!

And if you think holding on to a web business would be dumb, consider Craigslist founder Craig Newmark. He still earns $300 million per year from a site that has not changed in 25 years.

So why sell?

If Radvinsky really is shopping OnlyFans, it might be less about the money and more about the liability. Investigations, lawsuits, and growing regulatory attention may eventually become too much to manage, even for a billionaire in the shadows.

Plus, $8 billion is an enormous amount of money, especially when you're the sole owner. Because Leonid Radvinsky is a Florida resident, his only tax liability would be federal long-term capital gains. After paying the 20 percent capital gains tax and the 3.8 percent net investment income tax, his total tax bill would come to roughly $1.9 billion. That means if he sells, he walks away with approximately $6.1 billion in cash, after taxes.

Hard to argue with that.

And he'll do it without ever showing his face.