Leonid Radvinsky, the owner of OnlyFans, has died from cancer aged 43.
The American businessman, who was born in Ukraine but grew up in Chicago, purchased Fenix International Ltd – the British parent company of OnlyFans – from its founders Tim and Guy Stokely in 2018.
OnlyFans is a platform where users pay a subscription to creators in return for video content or images, or tip them for custom requests.
While other creators are on the platform, it is known for transforming the pornographic industry.
Radvinsky, estimated by Forbes to be worth $4.7 billion, “passed away peacefully after a long battle with cancer”, OnlyFans confirmed in a statement.
Early in his career, the entrepreneur enabled people to access adult sites via shared passwords. He then founded an early version of OnlyFans, MyFreeCams.
After purchasing OnlyFans, its popularity skyrocketed during COVID. However it came under scrutiny from regulators over its age verification checks, with concerns that youngsters were able to access adult content.
It was fined £1 million by Ofcom for failing to respond accurately to its requests for information about the measures it had in place.
In August 2021 OnlyFans made headlines when it outlined plans to stop allowing sexual material on the platform, but U-turned days later following a backlash from users and adult content creators.
In 2024, the most recently available accounts, OnlyFans generated more than £1bn in revenue from more than £7bn transactions, with 377m subscribers.
Radvinsky, who lived in a Florida mansion and was known to be reclusive, took out dividends in the hundreds of millions annually.
An investor in tech companies through Leo.com, he also donated millions to philanthropic causes such as the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.