The owner of OnlyFans, the subscription platform best known for adult content, has died at the age of 43.
Leonid Radvinsky passed away peacefully after a long battle with cancer, the company said in a statement, asking for privacy for his family.
Born in Ukraine and raised in Chicago, Radvinsky bought OnlyFans in 2018 from its UK-based founders.
Under his ownership, the site expanded rapidly, with its popularity accelerating during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Within three years, the growth helped place him on Forbes’ annual list of billionaires.
Founded in 2016, OnlyFans allows creators to post photos and videos and charge subscribers a monthly fee or tips.
While the platform hosts a wide range of material, from fitness and cooking to music, it is most closely associated with p∆rnography and its direct interaction model.
The direct interaction model includes livestreams and personalised content and the company retains a 20 per cent share of creators’ earnings.
According to its latest Companies House filings, OnlyFans generated $1.4bn (£1.04bn) in revenue in 2024 from more than £7bn in transactions.
The platform reported more than 377 million subscribers and about 4.6 million creators during the year.
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Its rapid expansion also drew scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers, particularly over access to adult material, according to reports.
In 2024, UK regulators opened an investigation into whether children were able to access pornographic content on the site.
That probe was later dropped, but the regulator Ofcom fined OnlyFans about £1m for providing inaccurate information about its age-verification measures.
Earlier, the platform had faced criticism over its handling of illegal content and allegations that some users were misled into believing they were communicating directly with creators when messages were managed by third parties.
However, legal challenges linked to those claims have so far been unsuccessful.
In August 2021, amid mounting pressure, OnlyFans briefly announced plans to ban s£xually explicit material before reversing the decision days later following widespread backlash from creators and users.
Radvinsky was a graduate of Northwestern University, where he studied economics, and most recently lived in Florida.
Forbes estimated his net worth at $4.7bn, and he had been exploring a potential sale of OnlyFans last year.
Beyond the platform, he invested in technology firms through a Florida-based venture capital vehicle and supported medical research, including donations to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, according to his website.