OnlyFans owner Leonid Radvinsky dies at 43

The owner of OnlyFans, a site known for its adult content that is credited with revolutionising the online porn industry, has died at the age of 43. Leonid Radvinsky, who was born in Ukraine and grew up in Chicago, had purchased the company in 2018 from its two UK-based founders. The site's popularity surged during the Covid-19 pandemic, landing him on Forbes' annual list of billionaires just three years later. He "passed away peacefully after a long battle with cancer," OnlyFans confirmed in a statement, which asked for privacy for his family. Founded in 2016, OnlyFans is a social media platform where creators can post videos and photos and charge subscribers for tips or a monthly fee.Creators share a range of content from cooking to fitness videos, but it is best known for pornography and the way it encourages creators and fans to connect through livestreams, personalised messages, and direct requests for custom-made photos and videos.In return for hosting the material, OnlyFans takes a 20% share of all payments.The company generated $1.4bn in revenue from more than £7bn transactions and had more than 377 million subscribers in 2024, according to its most recent Companies House filing. About 4.6 million creators were posting to the site that year, it said. The company has faced scrutiny over how it polices content and users on its site, who in theory must be 18 or over. In 2024, British regulators launched an investigation into whether children were accessing porn, an issue that the company at the time blamed on a technical issue. Ofcom ultimately fined the firm about £1m. The company has also been involved in legal fights with users, including some who felt scammed after learning that chats they thought they were having with OnlyFans creators were actually handled by low-paid, third parties. Those cases have not succeeded to date. Radvinsky graduated with an economics degree from Northwestern University and most recently lived in Florida, according to his website. As well as OnlyFans, he invested in tech companies via a Florida-based venture capital firm, Leo.com. His philanthropy included donations to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, according to his website.