Forbes Says $6.6 Billion, Bloomberg Says $12.2 Billion: Why Pavel Durov's Wealth Is So Hard to Pin Down

Ask ten websites for Pavel Durov's net worth and you will get ten different answers. Forbes says about 6.6 billion dollars. Bloomberg's index has been cited at about 12.2 billion dollars. Some sites claim 15.5 billion dollars, and others offer figures in between. They cannot all be right, but they are not all lying either. The disagreement reveals something important about how private fortunes are measured, and why the headline figure for Pavel Durov net worth should always be read with a health warning.

Durov was born on 10 October 1984 in Leningrad, co-founded VKontakte in 2006, left Russia in 2014 after being forced out of VK, and built Telegram with his brother Nikolai in 2013. Telegram moved to Dubai in 2017, crossed one billion monthly active users in March 2025, and is reported to be owned outright by Durov, who says it is not for sale. That single fact explains almost everything about the valuation dispute.

The Problem With Private Companies

Public companies are easy to value: share price times shares outstanding gives market capitalisation. Private companies have no share price, so analysts must guess what the company would be worth if sold or listed, and different analysts guess differently.

For Telegram, the guesses vary enormously because the company is unusual. It has a billion users but a tiny team. It was loss-making for years, then reported its first annual profit in 2024, about 540 million dollars on revenue of about 1.4 billion dollars. In the first half of 2025 it reported revenue of about 870 million dollars and an operating profit near 400 million dollars, but a net loss of about 222 million dollars after revaluing its Toncoin holdings. An analyst who focuses on operating profit will value it highly; one who focuses on net losses and crypto volatility will value it lower.

What Forbes Does

Forbes builds its billionaires list from a mix of public filings, private company valuations, and interviews. For Durov, it estimates Telegram's value using comparable companies, recent funding or bond transactions, and revenue multiples, then applies Durov's ownership stake. In 2023 that method produced 13 billion dollars. On 13 March 2026 it produced about 6.6 billion dollars, ranking Durov around 588th in the world.

Forbes revises its estimates as new information emerges. Its lower 2026 figure likely reflects cooler private-market valuations, volatile crypto-linked earnings, and legal uncertainty from the French case.

What Bloomberg Does Differently

Bloomberg's Billionaires Index uses a similar approach but with different inputs and timing. It may use a higher revenue multiple, weight Telegram's recent growth more heavily, or apply a different discount for the French legal risk. The result, cited at about 12.2 billion dollars in June 2026, is nearly double the Forbes figure. That gap looks shocking, but it is not unusual for a private company. A small change in the assumed multiple can move the valuation by billions when revenue is over a billion dollars.

Timing also matters. Forbes and Bloomberg update on different schedules, and Telegram's value can shift quickly with a new bond offering, a change in Toncoin's price, or a development in the French case. Comparing a March Forbes figure with a June Bloomberg figure is therefore not quite like comparing like with like, even though both claim to measure the same fortune at roughly the same time.

Why Some Sites Say $15.5 Billion

Less rigorous websites often publish higher figures, including 15.5 billion dollars, without explaining their method. These numbers are frequently copied from older articles, inflated by search-engine optimisation, or based on Telegram's reported 30 billion dollar valuation from a 2024 bond offering applied uncritically to Durov's stake. A 30 billion dollar company valuation does not automatically mean a 30 billion dollar founder fortune, because debt, minority investors, and valuation discounts all reduce the equity value.

Readers should treat any figure without a source, date, and method as entertainment. The credible 2026 range, based on Forbes and Bloomberg, is roughly 6.6 billion to 12.2 billion dollars.

The Ingredients of the Valuation

Telegram's 2024 revenue was about 1.4 billion dollars, split between partnerships and ecosystem income, advertising of about 250 million dollars, and Premium of about 292 million dollars. An optimist sees fast-growing subscriptions and a valuable crypto ecosystem; a pessimist sees dependence on a blockchain arrangement, a net profit wiped out by a token fall, and a founder facing charges in France and a warrant in Russia. Both use the same numbers; they weight risks differently.

Debt, Cash, and Other Assets

Valuation must also subtract Telegram's bond debt to get equity value. Little reliable public information exists about Durov's other holdings, and his citizenships in Russia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, the UAE, and France since 2021 complicate disclosure further.

How Dubai Billionaires Compare

A listed developer's stake can be priced daily from the stock market; a private messaging founder's stake can only be guessed. For a more conventional, asset-backed fortune, see Mohamed Alabbar's net worth, where Emaar's listed shares give analysts far more public data, even though estimates there also vary between about 2.3 billion and 3.2 billion dollars.

That comparison shows that uncertainty is normal, but scale matters. A one-billion-dollar range on a property fortune is large; a five-billion-dollar range on a private technology fortune is larger still, because the underlying asset is harder to price.

How to Read the Next Headline

When the next headline claims Durov is worth a new figure, ask three questions. First, who published it, and do they show their method? Second, what date does it refer to, and has Telegram's revenue or legal position changed since then? Third, does it account for debt and for the difference between a company's valuation and a founder's equity stake? If the article cannot answer those questions, treat its number as a guess.

The most defensible summary for 2026 is this: Forbes estimates about 6.6 billion dollars, Bloomberg estimates materially more, and the truth is probably somewhere in that range, moving with Telegram's results and legal outcomes. Durov remains a multi-billionaire by any credible measure, and he remains one of the richest people in Dubai's technology scene. The exact number matters less than the reason it is disputed: a private, founder-owned, billion-user company is one of the hardest assets in the world to price.