Leonid Radvinsky, owner of OnlyFans, dies aged 43

Leonid Radvinsky, the owner of OnlyFans, has died of cancer at the age of 43, the company announced on Monday.“We are deeply saddened ​to announce the death of Leo ​Radvinsky. Leo passed away peacefully after a ⁠long battle with cancer,” said a spokesperson for the company, best known for subscriptions to pornographic content creators. “His family have requested privacy at ​this difficult time.”Radvinsky, a Ukrainian-American billionaire with a net worth of about $3.8bn as of May 2025, acquired Fenix International Limited, OnlyFans’ parent company, in 2018. He served as the company’s director and majority shareholder. Born in Odesa, he grew up in Chicago and studied economics at Northwestern University. According to the Wall Street Journal, he began running pornography sites as a teenager.In recent months, Radvinsky had engaged in talks to sell a 60% stake in OnlyFans in a sale that would have valued the company at about $8bn. According to OnlyFans, Radvinsky had moved his ownership to a trust in 2024.OnlyFans, founded in 2016 and best known for pornographic material, allows adult film actors and sex workers to make money from posting content on the subscription-based platform. The company typically takes a 20% cut of payments, leaving the remaining 80% for creators, which resulted in dividends of hundreds of millions of dollars for Radvinsky. The UK-based company grew in popularity during the pandemic and has established itself as a way to generate a significant income online. In addition to superstar adult content creators, its creators also include Olympians and teachers who said their day jobs failed to pay them enough to make ends meet. OnlyFans has said it is focused on empowering women and content creators to post sexually explicit content in a safe online environment.Though OnlyFans has tried to expand beyond sexually explicit content, pornographic material remains its best-known product. In 2021, it briefly announced that it would ban sexually explicit content before quickly reversing course, and some creators on the website promote various interests such as photography, fitness and makeup. Radvinsky’s company was not without controversy as well. A 2024 Reuters investigation reported on women who said they had been sexually enslaved to make money from the site.