Telegram Turned Profitable in 2024: The Real Numbers and After

Yes, Telegram turned a profit for the first time in 2024. Pavel Durov announced it on December 23, 2024, and the accounts shown to investors, reported by the Financial Times in 2025, put revenue at $1.4 billion and net profit at $540 million, after a $173 million loss in 2023. The first half of 2025 still ended in a net loss, because Toncoin crashed. Here’s where the money comes from, what happened to the Durov case, and what it means if you run a channel, where Telegram followers now translate into revenue.

How much did Telegram make in 2024?

The first announcement came from Pavel Durov himself, on X, on December 23, 2024: “Telegram is now profitable”. He gave three markers. Telegram Premium subscribers had tripled in a year to more than 12 million. Ad revenue had grown “a few times”. And 2024 revenue passed $1 billion, with more than $500 million in cash at year end, excluding crypto assets.

The detailed numbers came out in 2025, when Telegram showed its accounts to investors ahead of a bond sale. The Financial Times published them, and outlets such as TASS and LIGA.net picked them up:

• 2024 revenue: $1.4 billion, up from $343 million in 2023;
• 2024 net profit: $540 million, against a $173 million loss the year before;
• roughly half of revenue filed under “partnerships and ecosystem”, $292 million from Premium and $250 million from advertising;
• stated target for 2025: $2 billion in revenue and $720 million in profit.

One point is worth reading twice. Half the revenue came neither from subscriptions nor from ads, but from deals tied to Toncoin, the cryptocurrency of the TON ecosystem. That dependence is what made the following year harder.

How does Telegram make money?

For its first eight years, Telegram sold nothing. Durov funded the app out of his own fortune, then with debt. Monetization started in 2021 and now rests on four sources.

1. Telegram Premium: the paid subscription, launched in 2022, which unlocks higher limits, faster downloads and exclusive features. More than 12 million subscribers at the end of 2024, $292 million in revenue for the year.
2. Advertising: sponsored messages of up to 160 characters, shown in public channels with at least 1,000 subscribers, with no targeting based on private chats, according to the official Telegram Ads platform. $250 million in 2024.
3. Stars and in-app purchases: an internal currency used to pay for mini apps, content and gifts.
4. Exclusivity deals with the TON ecosystem: the biggest line and the most volatile, since it follows the price of Toncoin.

Durov explained his thinking in 2025 on Lex Fridman’s podcast, with a line he repeats often: principles over greed. He argues against using private data for ads. The clip below sums up his position.

@lexfridman

How Telegram makes money: Principles over greed – clip from Lex Fridman Podcast 482 with Pavel Durov. Guest bio: Pavel Durov is the founder and CEO of Telegram.

♬ original sound – Lex Fridman – Lex Fridman

Debt, bonds and cash: where does Telegram stand?

In his December 2024 post, Durov said Telegram had issued around $2 billion of debt over four years, and that it had repaid a large part of it in fall 2024, taking advantage of favorable market conditions.

In May 2025, Telegram raised about $1.7 billion in convertible bonds, mostly to refinance and buy back bonds due in 2026. One piece got stuck: $500 million of its bonds are frozen at Russia’s central securities depository, the NSD, because of Western sanctions, according to the Financial Times as reported by Finance Magnates.

What strikes me is how fast things turned around: $142 million in cash in mid-2024, $910 million a year later. A good share of that came from crypto, since Telegram told investors it had sold more than $450 million worth of Toncoin in 2025, again according to the Financial Times.

What happened to Pavel Durov in France?

The year Telegram became profitable was also the year of the arrest. Pavel Durov was detained on August 24, 2024 at Le Bourget airport, arriving from Azerbaijan. On August 28, according to the Paris prosecutor’s statement, he was placed under formal investigation for complicity in running a platform that allows illicit transactions, distribution of child sexual abuse material, drug trafficking, fraud and money laundering, and for refusing to provide information to the authorities.

The judicial supervision was strict: €5 million bail, reporting to a police station twice a week, and a ban on leaving France. The Verge summed up the charges in the video below, posted on August 30, 2024.

@verge

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is charged with enabling illegal transactions and complicity in the distribution of CSAM. #telegram #paveldurov #privacy #news #techtok #vergecast

♬ original sound – The Verge

The restrictions were then eased. In July 2025, Durov was allowed to travel to the United Arab Emirates, where he lives, for stays of up to two weeks. On November 13, 2025, France 24 reported that the investigating judge had fully lifted the travel ban and the requirement to report to police in Nice, noting that Durov had “fully complied” with his supervision. The investigation itself remains open, and Durov denies any wrongdoing.

Is Telegram still profitable in 2025 and 2026?

On the audience side, things look good. On March 19, 2025, Durov announced “significantly over 1 billion” monthly active users, making Telegram the world’s second most popular messaging app outside WeChat, behind WhatsApp.

On the accounts side, it’s more mixed. According to the Financial Times, first-half 2025 revenue rose 65% to $870 million. Subscriptions nearly doubled to $223 million and advertising brought in $125 million. Around $300 million still came from Toncoin-linked exclusivity deals. Operating profit was close to $400 million. But Toncoin lost about 69% of its value in 2025, which forced Telegram to write down its holdings: a net loss of more than $220 million for the half, against a $334 million profit a year earlier.

In other words, the messaging business makes money, but the bottom line still hangs on the price of a cryptocurrency. In late May 2025, Durov also announced a one-year deal with Elon Musk’s xAI to distribute the Grok chatbot for $300 million in cash and equity (CNBC). Musk replied the same day that no deal had been signed. As for an IPO, Telegram told bondholders it would wait for more clarity on the Durov case.

What it means for channel owners

Telegram’s profitability isn’t only a shareholder story. Since 2024, the platform has paid 50% of ad revenue to the owners of the channels where the ads appear, and those ads only run in public channels with at least 1,000 subscribers (Telegram Ads, page checked on September 22, 2026). The more ads Telegram sells, the more your channel can earn.

In practice, here’s what matters if you want a share:

1. Cross 1,000 subscribers: that’s the threshold for receiving ads. Below it, you get nothing from the ad platform. A first batch of Telegram followers can help you get there faster.
2. Post regularly: the ad platform sells views. A channel that rarely posts generates few impressions.
3. Keep a clear topic: advertisers pick the channels they appear in, so a focused subject attracts better paid ads.
4. Add Premium content and Stars: paid posts, subscriptions, gifts. These are the two sources Telegram talked about most in 2024 and 2025.